Shooting Star
©1998-2015
The mythology of tourism is probably one of the most powerful systems of meaning.
For several years I was taking pictures of tourists at various frequently visited locations around the world.
The subject of this work is the multiplication of an idea of places loaded with meaning and connoted with culture, romance and leisure (such as monuments, landscapes, landmarks, etc).
These sites have been photographed and reproduced innumerable times and therefore are part of our general knowledge and personal photographic albums. The ongoing reproduction of the very same subjects reinforces images of prefabricated ideas and rarely describes real circumstances.
By cutting out the posing and shooting figures and superposing the „sceneries“, the individual experiences become disputable.
Diversity shrinks into one single image/layer .and at the same time every picture of this work could still be defined as a representation of an individual journey.
Since we all are influenced by pictures of these specific sites, we recognize them despite the layering, as a part of our knowledge and identity and hence can’t withdraw our participating.
