Scenes For Life

"SCENES FOR LIFE" uses trivial pictorial material from ordinary mail order catalogs (like Sears) to create a non-linear fictive storyboard with film-stills of a movie that has never existed.

In the mail order catalogs usually the same models are depicted frequently through the whole catalog – similar to main actors in movies. These models become the actors of the body of work "SCENES FOR LIFE". After cutting them out of their original context in the catalog – where they appear to have no relation to each other and usually are only related to the viewer – they are put into new sceneries and relations with other figures from the catalog. One series of images only uses the models from one catalog.

The created scenery starts to tell a story of life and relationship that has been reproduced in movies and tv-soaps a million times. Serial presentation of the images gives the viewer the possibility to read and continue his own narrative in these "film stills".

To shoot these photographs situations like dioramas are installed where the paper cut-outs of the models are stuck on different layers of plexiglass in front of a background that was also taken from the same catalog as the models. Different distances of the plexiglass layers from the camera make it possible to adapt the different sizes of the cut out figures and make them relate to each other.

Setting the lights thourouly and multi-exposuring the image (with focussing once on each layer) the result becomes a photographed collage-installation that shows a vague spatial construct of the persons and their relations to each other. The soft blur of the whole scenery that develops during the multiple exposure underlines the constructed atmosphere and gives the photos an impression of dream images or snapshots taken from movie screens.

The pictures are presented in groups of 3 to 9 images and combine black and white prints and coloured prints in different sizes.

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