_s.jpg "DEADR_2024_FS, 2024 (\"We are at a crossroads. War or peace.\")")
The Lilienstraße (a generic name for a street in Germany) project aims to create an unbiased collection of societal positions and opinions in Germany and beyond, starting in 2024. Primarily, people in the state of Brandenburg who are neither politicians nor public opinion leaders are asked for their views. In collaboration with the artist, a brief and concise formulation that reflects the position of the depicted person is being developed in a dialogical format. This provides an opportunity for those who feel underrepresented in the current political agenda to express themselves and their milieu.
On a visual and textual level, the project explores how the political versus private image of a citizen is formed, and what visually constitutes the image of a homo politicus. It examines how individual or group staging, the inclusion of a quote as text in/on the image, or the deliberate choice of background influences perception. The opinion images will likely be categorized into the following categories: the Angry, the Worried, the Optimistic, the Secure, the Undecided, and the Enraged.
Lilienstraße continues the August Sander's (1876–1964) tradition of typological documentation while interrogating whether 'objective' social photography remains possible in post-unified Germany. By redirecting curatorial attention to Eastern German voices systematically underrepresented in institutional photography canon, the project challenges the historical dominance of Western German visual representation in contemporary discourse.
The idea for the project is also inspired by the historical exhibition The Family of Man by art historian Edward Steichen in 1955 in New York. From a theoretical perspective, the project draws on Horst Bredekamp's Theory of Bildakt (2007) and Wolfgang Kemp's Reception Aesthetics approach (1991).
The project began shortly before the 2024 European elections and is intended to continue over a longer period. Participation in the project is free of charge for all participants.
Images from the photographic series can also be viewed as on Instagram as highlights or as posts.
❏ Download a PDF with a German translation
_s.jpg "DERNR_2024_LNAX, 2024 (\"Shake off the shock. Use frustration for the fight.\")")
_s.jpg "DEWDZ_2024_E, 2024 (\"A healthy mind in a healthy body. Strengthen the sense of community.\")")
_s.jpg "DEWDZ_2024_AMM, 2024 (\"One world, one family. Diverse, yet united.\")")
_s.jpg "DEADR_2024_LS, 2024 (\"There is no living being that is as knowingly self-destructive as humans.\")")
_s.jpg "DERNR_2024_NC, 2024 (\"Live as you are and love whom you want.\")")
_s.jpg "DEWER_2024_M, 2024 (\"Inferiority complex rules. Fear destroys dreams.\")")
_s.jpg "DERNR_2024_AAR, 2024 (\"Sympathies for right-wing extremists worry us.\")")
_s.jpg "DEWEU_2024_SM, 2024 (\"Don't be exploited by politics.\")")
_s.jpg "DEWEU_2024_BL, 2024 (\"Peace is not everything, but without peace, everything is nothing.\" – Willy Brandt)")
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