Tata by Paula Muhr (August 23, 2009) 
(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
Categories / Conceptual Photography / Portraiture / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 1 Comment
curator statement - Roman Babjak on Paula Muhr
I fell in love with Paula’s images in 2005 or 2006, when I first saw her website. She is very active as artists, curator and writer. The first time I met her was when she won the 2007 sittcomm.award. The photos presented here might look banal on first sight, or without a deeper meaning, but the contrary is true. I like the tension between the banality of the author's home setting and her attempt to build a personal relationship with her father who belongs to this space more visually than in reality. It seems that the language of fashion photography gives sense to the everyday nonsense. Paula's photographs balance between irony and parody, between love and hatred. I like Paula's approach, it is a very intimate personal story. She found a way to portray a very delicate issue using a very basic form. Roman Babjak is the curator and editor of photo.sittcom.sk, a web based project aimed at discovering and presenting young artists from Central and Eastern Europe working with video & photography.
Next / photo.sittcomm – a little bit of punk, day 6 / Previous / Young Bangladeshi Photographers, day 3 /
Poll results
Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
Posted in category 649
Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
Through the work "Tata" I investigate various modes of representation and role models which we internalise in such an extent that they inform our subjectivity. I turn my father (Serbian: tata) into a kind of amateur fashion model asking him to pose for me in his favourite clothes. He dresses himself up strike poses in front of my camera in an attempt to present all for him important aspects of his predominantly macho identity: successful businessman, tennis champion, gentleman, adventurous skier. I stage his game of posing on different locations in and around our family house. The images are made as a reference to both fashion photographs and family album snapshots. The important difference lies in the fact that my father strikes poses, which are an amalgam between his normal postures and his interpretation of the expected attitudes of professional fashion models. Therefore, the resulting images, although staged, retain certain qualities of family snapshots. My father's identity is at the same time revealed and concealed as he acts out his dominant roles. By imitating images from mass media with which he strongly identifies my father tries to create an illusion of ideal life in which he strongly believes - a still rather fit and agile elderly gentleman who can effortlessly adapt to just about any male role. By overacting his roles he unconsciously deconstructs his own ideals.
Paula Muhr (1977) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Click weblink paulamuhr.de or browse our archives
Out now! 50pm new issue
Sports Issue Magazine App
Posted in category 649
A monumental waste of pixels! A boorishly self-conscious display of vapidness.