The Beauty of Imperfection

The Beauty of Imperfection

The Beauty of Imperfection

"Disturbing, beguiling, excitingly different, not to be overlooked - Alina Gross' photographs are of tremendous suggestive power. The internationally renowned photographer has developed a visual and photographic language that immediately fascinates the viewer and demands a great deal from him. Her motifs are women and their bodies, the metaphors and ambivalences of sexuality and gender. Undisguised and unadorned, realistic and yet so irritatingly alienated or re-enacted with objects that our focus becomes a new one. We have to let go of the classic erotic thought pattern that is inevitably associated with nudity and the allusion to genitals. In unusual pictorial inventions she combines the bodies and body parts with flowers, fabrics, jewels and paint or paints them colorfully. Unflattering poses or disturbingly intimate details counteract the prevailing thinking about the most advantageous and perfect representation of naked bodies. In her colorful productions hovers a hint of criticism of prevailing ideals of beauty and gender classifications or the ideas of what a woman should look like and how she should pose. Her view does not show the bodies perfectly or shamefully, and yet - or precisely because of this - the photographs are of shimmering beauty. The images irritate in a joyful way and set off a journey inside us - a mental cinema, inspired by the sensuality and originality of these photographs. These illustrate above all show one thing: The great strength, self-confidence and power of women. Women's empowerment at it's best.

Dorothee Achenbach"