Echo

Echo examines the role of photography in (de-)constructing traditional identity categories to develop pluralistic views of individual and collective identity. Photography is understood as an active agent in the production of cultural meaning.

With Echo, I continue my long-standing inquiry into corporeality as a volatile terrain of political and aesthetic negotiation. Within photographic, performative and installation formats, my work deals with 'the' body as a construct, material and representative within social orders. The work comprises a total of ten camera setups, which are to be installed as a 3-channel projection in the space as well as brought together in the form of a book.

Since its invention, photography has not only depicted identities, but actively co-produced them. Echo positions itself against the traditional notion of a clear photographic subject and makes the power structures of portraiture negotiable. As a trans* body, I find myself in a constant balancing act between internalised and projected politics of gazes.

Photography is understood not only as a means of representation, but also as an active agent in the production of cultural meaning. On this basis, Echo examines the role of photography in the (de)construction of traditional identity categories in order to develop pluralistic perspectives on individual and collective identity.

The project thus operates at the intersection of photography history, media theory and gender studies. A technical setup consisting of three synchronised cameras enables a critical reassessment of classical photo theory and connects it with contemporary discourses on the body, power, politics of visibility and self- determination.

In the process of critical consciousnes(1), Echo allows the self-portrait to become a place where mechanisms of being seen are critically examined and transformed into self determined, transformative practice(2). Instead of a linear operator-referent-spectator triangle, a simultaneous, plural and fluid image space emerges. The image does not show ‘who I am’ but rather makes visible the conditions under which an ‘I’ is produced and seen in the first place. Echo thus creates a diagram of relations as a visual metaphor for the fact that identity is always mediated by the media and visibility is a space of negotiation.

(1) Conscientização, Paulo Freire

(2) "Self-attributions and external attributions go hand in hand here; however, the participants never fall into the temptation of viewing the social game as natural and thereby fixing certain identities.“ Stiegler, 2024