The Body

For the last feature of the PHOTO MEET & NORTHERN NARRATIVES Open Call we present the works by Alba Zari, Jessy Boon Cowler and Stefan Reichmann who, with their own distinctive approaches have explored different aspects of the human body and our innate relationship with mother nature.
After several months in lockdown we have all longed for the holiday season to get in touch with the elements and to get our share of fresh air. While our previous feature focused on various aspects of the rural context, this time we decided to celebrate the summery feeling through our intimate need to expose our body to sunlight and rediscover the primordial link with water.

Thanks to the contributing photographers (in alphabetical order): Alba Zari, Jessy Boon Cowler and Stefan Reichmann

Jessy Boon Cowler

Postcards from Pachamama

Postcards from Pachamama delves into the lost symbiotic relation between the human body and nature. Your compositions of naked bodies entangled with cutouts of exotic landscapes suggest the longing to connect to a primordial self. Could you please tell us more about you conceived and developed your project?

It wasn’t something that was planned, really. I’ve never set out to tackle a subject, I tend to make work instinctually and then realise what it’s about in retrospect. I always find out what was going on in my head at the time of making work on reflection. So I guess recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the mess we’re in as a species, and how I believe that the only way we could begin to remedy this mess is by seeing that we have much more in common with our fellow humans and other living things than we often believe. I’m really drawn to Latin America and the Caribbean and have quite an extensive archive of photos I’ve taken there.

I’m interested in how people exoticise foreign lands and act differently when they’re on holiday. I also love celebrating the human figure, and have archives of beautiful bodies I’ve shot. I began playing with physical collage a few years ago and these combinations really stood out to me. I realised I was using these wish-you-were-here cliches, like postcards from Mother Nature to humanity, reminding us of her bounty.

Once I’ve figured out the themes and processes then I start refining them, but to begin with it’s very much automatism. My work is about escapism, both in the process and the outcome but I also want to convey a kind of manifesto of hope, an affirmative action in portraying my vision of utopia.

Your work has recently received some great press and recognitions. What could you anticipate on what comes next for you?

Next... I’d love to exhibit more - I feel like my work is never really finished until I’ve seen it manifest physically, and I have lots of plans for how to use space, installation and even sculpture to break away from these screens we’ve become even more glued to. I also have a project I’ve been dreaming up for years, trying to challenge the stereotypes us westerners have about Colombia. So I’d love to make that happen in the next couple of years.

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Alba Zari

FKK

Your video Freikorperkultur illustrates a nostalgic sensorial experience in touch with the summer sea in Trieste, Italy. You have previously drawn  an analogy with the family portrayed being banished from Eden. Dreamy underwater footage, coupled with bare bodies isolated on the shore, do resonate with a primordial state, free from constraints and temporarily hung in a family nucleus which soon will see another member coming to life. Could you please tell us about your intentions, your process and what links you to this specific family? 

I was interested in the beach called La Costa dei Barbari and the people that live there because of the life choice that they made, living there naked not far from the city of Trieste. 

It’s like they have decided to create a different world and live in a new way, with different rules in their own community. Even if it looks like Eden they have build a utopian and ideal place, where they could escape from a society to create a their own one. Is it really possible to create a different way of living? Can we really escape from society to live how we really want? How far can we go to escape?

I got closer to this particular family because I wanted to understand the consequences of this choice on a community, on all the family members, to understand the difference between an individual choice and a collective one. I approached them with intimacy and respect, I was part of them for a few days. The topic of maternity and being a women raising children is something very important to me. Even in that paradisiac beach some society roles are still very strong; a women is left to raise a child, carrying the weight of her body and waiting on the shore for her partner to come back. 

The way that this family was living the past summer interested me personally because I grew up in a community that today we could call hippy or new age in Thailand that had a very different way to live in respect of the society. I wanted to reflect on what we are leaving out of the world we escaped from.

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Stefan Reichmann

Uman See

Groups of young bathers enjoy diving and swimming in a lake. Tell us about this lake and what makes it special. 

UMAN SEE started with many lakes, and in the end I included two lakes. They are called Wörthersee and Forstsee, and they are both located in Carinthia in the south of Austria, where I come from. Those are really beautiful lakes with drinking water quality. 

At lake Wörthersee, with its turquoise colour, there are just a few places with open public access to the lake. This is also a current political issue. Those with a lot of money or with the right political connections already own or can buy the few properties left at the lake although there is a so called ‘construction stop’ on the shores of the lakes right now. 

UMAN SEE celebrates these few open public places and the teenagers using them in a creative way. 

Lake Forstsee is completely different than lake Wörthersee. You can only access it on foot, and it is surrounded by trees and wild nature. So it is a lake where more the ‘alternative’ scene meets, whereas lake Wörthersee is known for its party scene. 

Your series celebrates a lighthearted and yet essential connection with nature in a context where young people can socialise and relish their lives. How did UMAN SEE came about? 

Carinthia is best known for its numerous lakes and its bathing culture. So I started at a small public area at Lake Wörthersee where a big rope is tied to a tree to swing into the lake. Others climb the big oaks to the highest point, to jump deep into the lake. It is a meeting point for teenagers in the summer where a lot of action happens. This made it easy for me to photograph them, because everyone wants to have a good photo of their jump.

This place ignited the idea to explore more lakes, but in the end I stayed as I said with two lakes to have a consistent storyline. I don ́t really have to travel far away to find my projects, I rather develop new projects close to where I have been born, where I know the area and the people. In the end I photographed this project throughout two summers.

We could’t get enough of your poetic and fresh images. Will we see the series exhibited or published soon? 

The photos are right now exhibited - guess! -at a lake in Carinthia, lake Aichwaldsee.
The book UMAN SEE is already available, and can be purchased through my website. 

I will see how things develop with Covid19, but another exhibition is planned for autumn in Vienna at the Künstlerhaus. 

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