The View of the Other

Hans Georg Berger, Nora Bibel, Buddhist Archive of Photography (Luang Prabang), Ting Ting Cheng, Claus Rottenbacher, Marei Wenzel

The view of the other becomes noteworthy when it transcends attitudes of romanticism and exoticism. Mythologising or gawking at the other as a curiosity is a short-lived, unedifying pleasure. Opening one’s eyes to the unfamiliar, and so becoming unfamiliar to oneself, yet understanding oneself better through observing it – this is an ideal motivation for sharpening the senses, for travel, for photography. In portraits of monks that he contrasts with old portraits from monasteries in Laos, Hans Georg Berger illuminates existence and its resolution in Buddhist culture. A young Chinese woman (Ting Ting Cheng) goes on a meditative journey through Europe and finds answers. Flanked by lucid interiors from Hué (Marei Wenzel) and a series about Vietnamese emigration and return (Nora Bibel), the view is noticeably broadened: home and the unknown, both in the world and within oneself. Church interiors from an angle near the floor (Claus Rottenbacher) ground the viewer in Christian traditions, yet the unknown is omnipresent here too.