SHOW is a portrait of Hamburg´s redlight-scene I created in 2010 in the context of a two artists show at Vicious Gallery in Hamburg.

At the time I defined my work as portraits of subcultures, while the other artist, Stefan Strumbel, explained his work as intercourse with the German term “Heimat”. The artists learned from locals that the redlight district with its scene had a local “Heimat” understanding, leading to this series and the exhibition´s concept.

I was following for a few weeks, primarily sex workers in their daily lives, and within the process, I offered these ladies to shoot as well images they could use to communicate in exchange for their access and time.

The shown pieces (SHOW 2020) are based on a series I created for one of the ladies and reinterpreted in 2020 for this exhibition. The show´s subject was 22 artist positions and their interpretation of eroticism, some crossing the border to pornography, in photography.

The series was inspired by the classic development process in analog photography, working with contact prints and test strips. I, formally, changed the motives to result in abstraction and images with strongly reduced explicitness. As well these pieces are a play with contrast in size and focus. While the triptychs have a petite size – the sensor size – and the others are heavy crops blown up big.