‘HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY’ 2016-2019 / 2021

photographic project, published in a first edition of 20, each including 32 written postcards in a handmade paper box

This project emerged out of the partially therapeutic involvement with the experience of a close friend being imprisoned on the opposite side of the world for about two years. Handwritten postcards refer to the distance and personal necessity of addressing someone in order to enable expression. 

The postcards’ aim lies in decoding the phenomenon of absence by dialectically understanding its parameters of time and space: the here and there, past and future, imagination and reality. The phantom of absence originates from the memory of a person and obsesses the imagination. Through reflections it becomes projected onto the noeme of the photographic medium: solely in this medium lies the inherent connection between reality and past as the referential structure of photography. Simultaneously, the project reflects on the medium of photography in its essence of demonstrating the ’that-has-been’ – an evidence - resulting in the work’s documentary approach. Yet, this belief progressively correlates with the experiences of the seemingly unreal and the sensation of the absurd - interpreted as the human longing for understanding in a chaotic world consisting of phenomena without logic. 

In a discursive structure, text fragments of the correspondence are combined with a chronology of dated photographs. Their interplay captures certain states that constantly shift between rationality and emotion. Upon confronting the enigma of this project, the answer or creation of a narrative lies within the onlooker. 

Prints from this series are also available in 30x40cm in an edition of 11.