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In his previous work, Toni Hafkenscheid developed dramatically charged
scenes within domestic, everyday settings. For one of his series, the
subjects photographed in their dwellings performed theatrical, domestic
dramas. In another series, the artist "documented" moments before
and after a suicide- also staged.
With HO , Hafkenscheid pursues in a different way, his interest in lure
and device. Taken across North America, his recent images propose a
singular perspective on ordinary landscapes, urban territory, suburbs
and the grandiloquent Northern woods. Although they are taken from
real life, the photographs included in HO have the inherent quality of
mis-en-scene, the static, perfect, even idealized state of models and
miniatures. Isolated by out-of-focus foregrounds and backgrounds, neat
houses, deserted streets, shops and trains breaking through majestic
landscapes make the dark side of things visible. Yet, everything in these
idealized images of the world, in these microcosms, seems high-strung,
ready to burst should someone make an attempt at individual
affirmation.
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