dislocated

Oliver Gerhartz, Aleksandra Kubos, Karin Pelzer, Ingo Steinbach, Henry Wulff

Travellers know that feeling of dislocation all too well – when they wake up in the morning in a foreign place and, for a moment, find themselves wondering where they are. The disappearance of external boundaries, coupled with an increase in mobility in all areas of life, makes this feeling of dislocation an increasingly common phenomenon. Five photographers connected through the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie academy have explored this feeling. They portray abandoned villages as empty shells and uniform supermarkets as interchangeable façades – in the end, ‘every place is nowhere’, everything becomes the same, and, as Europeans, we’re made to feel as though we’re in a completely foreign land. At first, these various facets act as mirrors for social processes that are perceived subjectively and communicated descriptively. These images go beyond sober documentation in favour of empathic observation; the results are visual fictions that involve the viewer, that fill the missing link, and that make the gaps in utopian realities into spheres of personal projection.

Thomas Hegemann