It Takes Courage to Leave

This series revolves around the different rooms to which we are tied, in our minds and in real space. It is also concerned with the rooms we cross and inhabit in space and time, and the tension between mind space and real space and how these two spaces interact when we look at a photograph or go into nature. For this series Karin v. Oldershausen went rambling through her immediate surroundings and she realised how much the landscape was composed of a variety of rooms, in each of which different animals, insects and plants lived. Boundaries and thresholds between rooms are very attractive, they are tantalising places where something when stepped over might happen, fascinating places might reveal themselves. But to leave a familiar room is perhaps one of the most courageous actions one can perform. From the day we go to school for the first time and leave home, we keep leaving rooms. And one day we realise that we are also tied to mental rooms. Karin von Oldershausen takes photographs of the thresholds to different natural habitats, the fringes of the wood, the reed, the grassland. Behind the threshold there is a hidden room and a story which is not available to the eyes. A second photograph on the right shows the threshold we can never reach: The horizon, where our imagination is free to imagine what lies behind. The viewer is invited to move from one mental space to the other, from a rigid, bound to a place, tight state of mind to a free one. Mental room joins the physical room: It takes courage to leave our mental space. What also struck her was that the thresholds were peaceful and silent places, familiar places, mysterious places, between light and dark. They felt like ambiguous places of transition, from life to death. And again: It takes courage to die.