STAR SHOTS 2

Date: 2007

See images of both series here:

http://fotokatie.com/doku.php?id=starshots:star_shots_2007

and here:

http://fotokatie.com/doku.php?id=starshots:star_shots_2000

Size: 125cm x 85cm, Lambda Print mounted on Forex, with UV Protection

Media: Analogue Photography and Digital Collage

(…) All the time they have nothing in their heads but portraying themselves, in the most distasteful manner, though they are quite oblivious of this. What they capture in their photos is a perversely distorted world that has nothing to do with the real world except this perverse distortion, for which they themselves are responsible. Photography is a vulgar addiction that is gradually taking hold of the whole of humanity, which is not only enamored of such distortion and perversion but completely sold on them, and will in due course, given the proliferation of photography, take the distorted and perverted world of the photograph to be the only real one. Practitioners of photography are guilty of one of the worst crimes it is possible to commit–of turning nature into a grotesque. The people in their photographs are nothing but pathetic dolls, disfigured beyond recognition, staring in alarm into the pitiless lens, brainless and repellent. Photography is a base passion that has taken hold of every continent and every section of the population, a sickness that afflicts the whole of humanity and is no longer curable. The inventor of the photographic art was the inventor of the most inhumane of all arts. To him we owe the ultimate distortion of nature and the human beings who form part of it, the reduction of human beings to perverse caricatures – his and theirs. I have yet to see a photograph that shows a normal person, a true and genuine person, just as I have yet to see one that gives a true and genuine representation of nature. Photography is the greatest disaster of the twentieth century…

  Excerpt of an Interview with Thomas Bernhard about photography

The first series of star shots – The Phenomenon of Ex-changeability – emphasizes on and plays with those oh so informative and scandalous but rather stereotype situations in the world of celebrity gossip, categorized (by the artist) as at the beach, at a party, shopping, at the airport etc. Ever repeating scenarios, easy to identify as paparazzi imagery due to their blurriness and distance to the subject, resulting in a grainy pattern and not to forget the fine greenish blurry cloud in the foreground decorating most of the images, as a result of literally shooting their victim behind a camouflage of protective bushes. The ex-changeability of these images, which may only reveal the identity of their blurry protagonists throughout a well fitting or rather manipulative headline as well as the constant in-scening of both the observer and the observed is the main aspect in the first star shots series.

Are we observing or are we getting observed? In any case we have our mission and we intend to keep it secretly. Naturally we are observing, but maybe it is part of our mission to get observed. Somebody could try to reveal what we do and how we behave while we are observing. It is certainly interesting to discover which performance we offer playing the role of the observed. Indifferent expressions of those who know exactly that they simulate indifference with indifferent faces. Maybe they try to hide, that indifference can be a sign of maximum concentration. And maybe we observe to discover how those behave whose task is to get observed.

Leaving behind above mentioned easy-to-identify aesthetics of former mainstream paparazzi photography, the protagonists of the second series, both in front of and behind the camera, come out of their protective camouflage to carefully assist each other in finally choosing and publishing the most suitable moment. Focusing on young female media stars, star shots 2 reveals the pseudo scandal beneath the alleged perfect appearance of celebrities within paparazzi photography. Widely documented and broad casted disasters, such as Kate Moss' affection for cocaine or Britney Spears' inability to successfully park her car, are just a few examples to be reenacted by the artist herself in the photographic series.

Star shots 2 visualizes the crack in the mask, which, seductively glittering, slowly gives way under the pressure of constant observation and the inevitably destructive desire of self in-scene-ing, to eventually break open, scattering the myriad alleged scandals and tragedies, which the hungry public eye is waiting for day after day: The blank bareness in all its eerie, dazzling splinters. This series emphasizes the absurdity on which the female star cult is based and on the damaging consequences that a daily in-scene-ing can extend to.

Each series consists of 26 images, Lambda Prints, 125 x 85cm, mounted on forex. The body of work star shots includes besides the photographs, one gossip magazine and 10 different print publications.