Look At Me Now!
Description
Look At Me Now! is not a documentary series in the sense of an observation from the outside, but an attempt at an ongoing collective portrait. Growing up is a constant peeling out of certain stages of life and images that one has made of oneself. Especially at the beginning, this happens incredibly quickly. And yet every time there is the justified claim: Look! Now I am who I really am! In my photo series, I try to capture these moments of self-assertion, what is otherwise often dismissed as just a phase.
Through Milan, the son of a friend, I got access to his circle of friends, who fascinated me more and more after a first photographic acquaintance and whom I consequently wanted to portray in regular intervals. For a year now, a kind of continuous photographic diary has been created in which my view of them meets their view of themselves. The more time we spent together, the more their biographies unfolded, the portraits widened their space: relationships, migration experiences, friendship, future, parents, identity. Away from grand narratives of crisis, remote landscapes and foreign cultures, I wanted to capture this unbelievably condensed time of growing up, to share in their view of themselves, to look back with them on past images and develop new ones. And above all: to take them seriously in their self-expression and offer them the opportunity to create an image of themselves together with me that corresponds to their own ideal at this specific moment, beyond parental or social expectations.
Look At Me Now! is not a documentary series in the sense of an observation from the outside, but an attempt at an ongoing collective portrait. Growing up is a constant peeling out of certain stages of life and images that one has made of oneself. Especially at the beginning, this happens incredibly quickly. And yet every time there is the justified claim: Look! Now I am who I really am! In my photo series, I try to capture these moments of self-assertion, what is otherwise often dismissed as just a phase.
Through Milan, the son of a friend, I got access to his circle of friends, who fascinated me more and more after a first photographic acquaintance and whom I consequently wanted to portray in regular intervals. For a year now, a kind of continuous photographic diary has been created in which my view of them meets their view of themselves. The more time we spent together, the more their biographies unfolded, the portraits widened their space: relationships, migration experiences, friendship, future, parents, identity. Away from grand narratives of crisis, remote landscapes and foreign cultures, I wanted to capture this unbelievably condensed time of growing up, to share in their view of themselves, to look back with them on past images and develop new ones. And above all: to take them seriously in their self-expression and offer them the opportunity to create an image of themselves together with me that corresponds to their own ideal at this specific moment, beyond parental or social expectations.
Year 2022/23
