The exhibition is neither about yoga nor hysteria. It asks universal questions about how women’s bodies are exposed and objectified in photographs and the anxiety it evokes.
Today, the connection between Instagram and increased mental illness in young women is well known. Beyond the image surfaces, I think I hear a chorus of voices from disciplined bodies that want to tell a common and timeless women’s story. Just as timelessly, my way of working has moved through the history of photography. With an inner longing for the undisciplined, cameras and techniques have from now on been wildly mixed. An old wooden large-format camera from the 1800s has been helped by studio flashes. The digital camera has interpreted some of the hysteria’s poses in color.
Selfies have been taken with a pinhole camera built from a piece of cardboard. Its meager light admission has imitated the long shutter speeds of earlier times and becomes like eyes that never stop looking.
The exhibition’s photographs are characterized by common human ambivalence about being in the spotlight. They want to take over the room but hesitate at the same moment before the task. Some images are large and call for the viewer’s attention, while others are small and seek protection from prying eyes in hidden corners of the room.
