Rotterdam Photo

Lilo Mangelsdorff

Memory Affair

According to Susan Sontag “With the help of photographs, every family constructs a portrait chronicle of itself”. I inherited a box with many old photographs of my family but I wasn’t told any stories about them. While looking at the pictures, my own fantasy emerged and I gave them new faces. 

Covering the faces makes the people depicted more impersonal. This reveals the potential of the image and sensitizes our perception. It sharpens the gaze to see and read the posture, gesture, arrangement, and representation. I want to get people to look behind the surface and ironically question the photographic representation – beyond the culture of remembrance of family pictures. These often surreal to Dadaist-looking images provoke and question the photographic representation ironically. Influenced by the viewer’s own biographical and cultural background, his or her imagination can be set in motion by inventing new stories for the pictures and letting his own imagination play.

In the projects presented here, the concept of combining and, in a certain sense, staging in front of the camera is my working principle that develops intuitively and is then conceptually deepened.

 

Find out more: 

Website: www.lilomangelsdorff.de

Instagram: @lilomangelsdorff

Rotterdam Photo

Vierhavensstraat 56, 3029 BG Rotterdam