On Monday, I went to see the second installment of "Talents: New Photography from Berlin" at the Goethe Institut in collaboration with the C/O Galerie Berlin (one would think that between the two the exhibition wouldn't be so poorly presented). "Talents II" shows recent works by two artists, Frank Berger and Tobias Zielony. Since both artists work in photographic series, it was not surprising that they each chose to use slide projections to present their respective images. Although Frank Berger's concept and work was certainly intriguing, I would like to focus here on Tobias Zielony and his work, which I have encountered first at the Neue Galerie Weimar during the presentation of the Marion-Ermer-Award 2004 (which he had shared, by the way, with the fantastic e-team).This time around, a few blocks down from New York's Neue Galerie, Zielony shows an international selection of youths: from Halle/Neustadt, Los Angeles, Marseille, and Bristol/Newport. Besides the global street wear fashion, all these kids seem to share working class or marginalized backgrounds and bleak neighborhoods. They are photographed in the twilight between day and night as well as child- and adulthood. The dominant colors are the greens and oranges of the neon and street lights, and the blue hues of the night.
Zielony succeeds in depicting a sense of desperation and urgency behind the apparently universal display of boredom and posing of his adolescent subjects. Many of his images seem to be the documentary equivalent of Gregory Crewdson's staged photo-productions and carry the intimacy of Ryan McGinly pictures - just not as optimistic.
Zielony claims that he is more of an accomplice to these kids than a mere observer. But I don't think so. There is an apparent distance between him and them. While McGinley, for example, imagines himself amongst his models in an utopian world of everlasting fun, sex, drugs and games, Zielony seems deeply skeptical of the life in front of his camera. He might empathize, but he would not trade his life for theirs. I suspect that he seeks to justify his gaze, but I think his critical view is justification enough.
The representation of life on the margins follows a long tradition, and the emotional weight of Zielony's images, whether they depict depressed East German or French immigrant neighborhoods, might help to define for our generation where all these neo-liberal societies fail.
