Samsas Shadow
In my work Samsa’s Shadows, I present a photographic installation that was created during a six-month working grant at the Dr. Dormagen-Guffanti Center for People with Disabilities in Cologne. The title refers to Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis, in which a human being turns into an insect overnight – a literary symbol for ruptures in identity, the struggle with visibility, and transformation.
The beetle – based on a blurred photograph of a firebug taken by one of the center’s residents – serves as the central motif. As a symbol of metamorphosis, it appears repeatedly throughout the space: cut out, multiplied, shadowed.
Together with residents and participants of an ecological work group, I developed a project composed of cyanotypes and analog photographs. Cyanotypes are photographic processes in which light-sensitive material – for example paper – is exposed by direct contact. This creates images entirely without a camera. For the exposure, the participants placed wild plants from the center’s garden onto the paper, and their silhouettes were fixed by sunlight.
One of the cyanotypes shows a flying insect – possibly a wasp or a fly. A fleeting motion, seemingly captured with a technique known for its long exposure times. Such visual paradoxes run throughout the work: the bodiless shadow of a beetle, a poppy plant that looks like a cloaked little figure, layered and ghostly handprints. Time and again, moments arise in which an experimental and playful approach to photographic media becomes visible.
