in security

Concentrated, coordinated, superior, responsive and assertive are the faces of Aleksander, Fu, Daniela and other 10 protagonists who posed for Meinrad Hofer in the studio in 2020. At a next meeting "on location", however, they are relaxed, free, not immediately recognizable. The goal was to elicit two faces from them: an authoritarian one that corresponds to their professional image, and a private one that hints at the person behind the mask. They are security service members, or in Viennese: Türlsteher. Contrary to what one might expect, however, Meinrad Hofer has reversed the obvious order and asked them to properly embody their profession in the neutral photo studio (including dress code and the right mix of discreet restraint and clearly perceptible presence), while they are shown in plain clothes and without responsibility in the ambience of the club outside opening hours. The timing of the photoshoots at the beginning of the conditional Corona lockdown further intensified the project - after all, clubs and similar events accompanied by security personnel were hit harder than any other industry by official security regulations such as the curfew. It is important to Meinrad Hofer that in the course of such portrait and character studies, the interaction with the models triggers something that allows him to look behind the facades or - as in this case - behind the professional presence. At the beginning of the project in 2019, when he met Roland Lehner, the CEO of a security company, during a photo shoot for the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, other aspects were appealing, especially the unanticipated diversity of the employees. As it turned out, very few of them fit into the prototypical image of a security man - among them, for example, a petite woman who is a 6-time Kung Fu master. In this way, he had struck at the heart of the gender debate, which in recent years has been revived in favor of a more detailed differentiation of the sexes. By the way, as long as we are not allowed to have a night life, the securities will take care of the smooth operation in the Corona Test Lanes in Vienna.