other voices, other rooms (poems)

Ben is a lively boy, but still shy...he loves to hide and seek in different corners of different rooms in this big building which is his home. These are portraits of the atmosphere there more than documents. I was photographing during my years there while doing a documentary portrait project in a psychiatric clinic and an accompanied school for children with trauma . First they were a kind of of byproduct, but became a body of work all on its own over time progressed. They are settings of inner drama and feelings and also an interpretation on my own, but in collaboration with the children as they really wanted to act and to give an expression of their feelings and circumstances. This series progressed like a visual dream and I did choose black and white as a method of abstraction and to create a n atmosphere of distance and isolation. These girls and boys were all in their coming of age time and such a period is stark, powerful and surreal in itself. Like a fever dream, a mad poem where one has to cope with a lot of inner conflicts, longings and despair.