They say that a schizophrenic never dwells on the question of whether he is schizophrenic. So if you're asking yourself if I'm schizophrenic, it means you're not schizophrenic. Unfortunately, it doesn't work shit like that with talent. You keep asking yourself, am I talented? And it doesn’t give you an answer. There's no need for it. Maybe it's better not to ask, maybe it's better to do all sorts ...

They say that the biggest moth on earth is the Attacus atlas or the Atlas moth - with a wingspan measuring up to 24 cm (9.4 in). And the smallest moth is Stigmella maya with the forewing measuring just 1.2 mm. So I guess self confidence is like a moth - it can be small and it grows, sometimes it grows big and beautiful. It’s always fragile. And that moth is never bigger than yourself. You can’t ...

It so happened in my life that I ended up on the island of Sri Lanka and lived here for almost two years. In the Eastern province of the island I saw a lot of cows with big and sometimes huge letters and numbers on their sides. It turned out to be a way of local branding cows - it’s called hot iron branding. And it’s very big - sometimes it covers the whole body of an animal. I started to film ...

Back then I had a Leica R4, I loved that camera. Oh, it was a match - when you hold something in your hands and it lives together with you, it becomes a part of you. And you enjoy walking together. It didn’t happen with just any camera. Thanks to my friend and photographer Yakov Titov, who taught me a lot and let me test and hold different cameras in my hands, I realized that there are just ...

After my recovery from breast cancer and the completion of “The Smiley Cut” I continued the journey on my artistic practice with my participation at the residency Return2Ithaca. During the residency I let myself free to connect with the place and get inspired by the fellow artists and curators. I tried to find ways to express my initial question that I arrived to the island with. Where is ...

The last part of my project “I Climbed Across My Two Little Mountaintops” is the video performances. During my research I came across the story of Saint Agatha. Saint Agatha is a virgin martyr of Christian antiquity who had been tortured with the excision of her breasts by the Roman prefect Quintianus. The reason of her torture was her denial to marry him due to her vow of virginity. She is often ...

During my research project “I Climbed Across My Two Little Mountaintops” and the creation of the photographic series I aimed to present alternative narrations on my breasts. I wanted to deconstruct their notion and to be able to see them as an entity that defines my identity as a woman. I aimed to deconstruct the image of the breasts and their stereotypical connotations by creating a dialogue ...

“I Climbed Across My Two Little Mountaintops” is the product of my research work and artistic practice on the female breasts. I started it in 2019 during my MFA in Photography at HDK-Valand. The work consists of photographic series, gifs and video performances. I looked at the political, religious and cultural history of the Western Civilization’s culture and the ways they managed to form the ...

On April 2nd, Der Greif hosted an Instagram live event featuring Nigerian talent Aleruchi Kinika, who was awarded the Guest Room Scholarship for our Guest Room exhibition curated by Tina Campt & Keisha Scarville. The exhibition, titled "Poetics of Darkness," showcases Kinika's surreal photographic work, which tells visual stories through captivating images. One of her standout photographs from ...

December 2022, The chemotherapies have ended, the radiation treatments have ended and I am still lying in my bed isolated with covid. During the whole time of my treatments I had shown nothing but love and care towards my body. But my thirst for a “normal life” is growing more and more and I began to lose my patience. The minor sickness from now on evokes emotions of indignation. This is the ...

“The Smiley Cut” is a visual chronicle of my journey through cancer treatment. The photographic medium provided an outlet for me to navigate the stages of grief and confront the transformative journey my body was undertaking. Through these images, I reclaimed a measure of control over my physicality. While time seemed to stretch infinitely a tranquil refuge emerged in the nearby forest by my ...

This is a new series, I am not even sure about the title… Due to abundant rainfall in the past months, large portions of forests in the Netherlands are submerged underwater. Because of the reflection, the forest duplicates itself; above and below are practically the same, meeting each other in the middle. I wondered what would happen if I were to photograph this submerged forest upside down. ...

“Places” is a series I embarked upon during the pandemic. I came home with a lot of beautiful pictures, but felt unhappy with the results, as I saw little connection between the images and the experience of being in the forest. For long, I have had a fascination with the spaces shaped by trees and forests and how these spaces are defined by the way we walk among the trees. What defines a space? ...

The resilience of nature is astonishing. Destroy a piece of land, dump rubble and toxins, and let it clog up with everything that blows in. Don't look back, and it becomes beautiful all on its own. I became fascinated with this kind of landscape where different perspectives come together in a multitude of textures without fixed form, plan or design. These are wild places. For instance, adjacent ...

When starting with my project investigating the ‘soul’ of AI, I aimed to introduce incongruities. For instance, I entered the prompt: ‘The philosopher Hannah Arendt contemplates the mystery of birth and death.’ Surprisingly, this produced a black-and-white photo of two women who bore a striking resemblance to each other, standing next to a dome covered by cloth. Like some artificial womb ...

On March 15th, FORMAT Festival launched its 2024 edition, which is on view across multiple venues in Derby and the East Midlands until July 30th. The highly anticipated off-year programme is a celebration of the festival's 20th birthday, which kicked off with a special event on March 16th at QUAD, Derby's central hub for art and film. QUAD is a mixed arts venue based on the Market Place.

Inspired by an open call from Der Greif, I made a short series exploring how to depict authentic emotions with AI-generated imagery. To do this I used parts of Ahmad Shamlou’s poem ‘Common Love’ as guidance for every image in this series. The phrases I worked with most of the time were: ‘I am the common pain / cry me out’ and ‘In clear solitude I have wept with you / for the dead of this year / ...

I find myself increasingly annoyed by the recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, particularly by the way our cultural life is flooded by ghastly images and mindless texts devoid of any originality. On the other hand, this is a remarkable development that I wanted to understand better. So I started “The Most Likely Image”, a project investigating Artificial Intelligence’s creative ...

Der Greif is excited to introduce Dr. Caroline von Courten as the Artistic Co-Director of the organization. Together with Simon Lovermann, she is taking the lead in directing Der Greif towards new and exciting achievements. In addition to her role at Der Greif, Caroline teaches photography theory and visual culture studies at the Lucerne School of Design, Film, and Art in Switzerland. She holds ...

As an image maker and creative director, I've been drawn to narratives exploring community, liberation, and the vibrant identities within Southern Black culture and queer communities. Through my lens, I aim to capture moments of joy, resilience, and collective strength, rooted deeply in history and shared experiences. One of the most compelling aspects of my work has been engaging with women of ...

The photo series "Two-Spirited Soldier" pays homage to Southern LGBTQ+ veterans of the armed forces, with a focus on poet and veteran WJ Lofton. In the visual narrative, Lofton stands as a symbol of resilience and courage, depicted amidst the bold greenery of the battlefield, staking a southern patched quilted flag as a marker of identity and readiness to raise an SOS if needed. Amidst the ...

Polaroids in Blood is an ongoing photo project that raises the names of hundreds of people killed during this ongoing revolution in Iran which started September 2022 after Mahsa Zhina Amini's death. Their names, death and blood should not be forgotten. On September 16th 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini was beaten to death by Iran's morality police for wearing her veil in a way that did not ...

In the heart of Iran, whispers a proverb: ’یک دست صدا ندارد,’ where one hand may remain silent, but when joined by another, it finds its voice. This video work stands as a lyrical ode, a beacon calling communities to harmonize their differences, to blend their voices into a chorus that resonates, ensuring their collective echo reverberates far and wide. By reflecting and seeing ourselves in each ...

Our vision with the project Not A Typical Persian Girl is to not only shine a light on the complexity of the situation for women and girls in Iran but also to connect their struggles to those of women all over the world. We both have reflected on our past, and present, and on motherhood, and how the women in our life have affected us in being the people we are today. Our mothers, their mothers ...

In 2022, Stefanie Moshammer was one of the guest curators of Der Greif Issue 15. Moshammer has been in conversation with Der Greif regarding her latest body of work, "Each Poison, A Pillow", published by Éditions Images Vevey in 2023. Her interests lie between different media: photography, moving images, text, installations, textile-sculptural elements, and book publishing. Her work primarily ...