protrahere – to draw forth, to make visible
The project PROTRAHERE emerged from the question of what a portrait is at its core.
Not as a depiction of a person, but as the result of a field of tension between perception, expectation, and decision.
The point of departure is a fictional figure: Charlotte von Bergen, a young woman in the year 1929.
Within a conceptual framework, she is confronted with three distinct photographic attitudes of her time. These attitudes refer to specific photographic positions of the early twentieth century, whose representatives are explicitly named in the catalogue and in the image titles.
The work understands itself as a contemporary artistic engagement with these historical positions.
The references concern formal principles, aesthetic strategies, and photographic attitudes—not as reconstruction of specific works, not as imitation, and not with any claim to historical authenticity. From these references, the photographs develop an autonomous visual language of their own.
Each photographic attitude brings different aspects to the foreground.
Each gaze sets different emphases. At the same time, Charlotte herself changes through the process: through being seen, through showing herself, through what remains concealed.
At the center of the work are several questions:
– What is present and visible within a person?
– What is she willing to show?
– What does the photographer perceive?
– And what of this does he decide to make visible?
PROTRAHERE understands the portrait not as representation, but as the result of selection, reduction, and relation.
The image emerges where the inner life of a person, the perception of the photographer, and the conditions of the photographic process overlap. The title does not denote a state, but a process: the act of drawing forth.
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