Artist
Simon Grunert
Simon Grunert (b. 1990) is a German photographer and graphic designer. He holds a Bachelor's degree in North American Studies and a Masters in Photography from the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Gent. With a focus on photobooks, Grunert utilises a documentary approach to build imaginary realms and topographies. His work has been exhibited in various institutions in Germany and France, and has featured in publications such as Camera Austria International.
Wbsite: simongrunert.com
Senne 1 & 2
Senne is a very real place, yet it only exists as a photographic space within a two-volume tale. Though the title refers to a specific stretch of land, it quickly becomes apparent that Senne is a construct. Lacking a sense of time and place, the photographs offer a blueprint for a region of my own design. It is both imaginary and eerily familiar. Recurring themes in German society are condensed, undergoing a grotesque transformation. According to Aristotle, “probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities”. Following this dictum, seemingly fictional elements are interwoven with the topography and folklore we expect and know. From this constant negotiation between ourselves and the other, the artificial and the natural, the good and the bad, a different world emerges. Senne 1 & 2 should be read as a documentary project guided by what is plausible rather than facts. The parallel world that this constructivist approach generates lets us draw new conclusions about our own reality.
Returning time and again to the rural areas and subcultures of her childhood in southern Bavaria, Anna Aicher embarks on photographic examinations of the concepts of home and tradition. In projects such as Like Father, Like Son, she creates calm, concentrated images and enters into an intensive dialogue with her protagonists so that a special intimacy becomes visible.
Nominated by Sithara Pathirana, Project Manager for Triennial Expanded, Maximilian Glas explores the human encounter with nature in his project Weather Constructions. In an almost humorous way, he questions speculative processes of science by also undermining the project's own validity through the display of errors. What is special about Weather Constructions is that it is highly scientific while at the same time an experience for the senses.
Nominated by photographer and lecturer André Lützen, Altay Tuz explores the question of integration and identity in Turkish cultural clubs and cafés in Hamburg and Berlin in his project Members Only. Using his camera to gain access to these spaces, Tuz makes images of full of information, details and signs, ultimately making visible the symbiosis of tradition and the present.
Nominated by Ingo Taubhorn, Chief-Curator House of Photography/Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Simon Grunert's photographic practice is rooted in a documentary approach, but plays with its boundaries. In series including Senne 1 & 2, he often uses specific geographical settings as the basis for his stories but then adds pseudo-scientific or fictional elements, reducing his original intention of conveying a sense of place to the abstract.
Nominated by photographer and lecturer Linn Schröder, Julia Gaes is fascinated by bodies. Over several summers she accompanied burlesque performers and drag queens for her Polaroid work WIGS & GLOVES, reflecting a queer space that allows freedom beyond binary thinking worlds. With humour, eroticism, irony and tragedy, the performances in Gaes’ pictures are political and queerfeminist – subversive moments showing an incredible diversity.