Collier Schorr
BLUMEN
22.07. – 31.08.2008
Villa Romana
Via Senese 68
50124 Florence
We cordially invite you and your friends to the
opening of the exhibition on Friday 18 July at 7 p.m.
Opening Times:
Tues – Fri 3 – 7 p.m. and by appointment
BLUMEN is the second installment of Collier Schorr‘s “Forests & Fields“ project. Schorr has been documenting the life and landscapes of a small town in Southern Germany for the past 15 years. Spending summers and occasional winters there, her work has veered from mainly portraiture to include domestic landscapes and arrangements as a way of informing about the lives, structures and temperaments of the townspeople of Schwäbisch-Gmünd.
BLUMEN is a play on the idea of floral arrangements, of taking what is natural and fitting it into a compromised position. These actions mirror Schorr‘s idea of portraiture as a picture of both the subject and the photographer‘s idea of who the subject is, merging her subject‘s identities with her own idea of what it is to be “German”.
Schorr‘s flower portraits are staged: constructed landscapes suggest a formal interest in composition as well as an attempt to interrupt the natural vista. Schorr first gathers flowers from neighbouring gardens, then transports them to higher areas of the town, to mountaintops and slopes. The flowers are then tied to strings and held up by sticks. By removing the flowers from their place of cultivation and positioning them on public land, Schorr suggests a migration or re-patriation.
Small black and white portraits of the “Germans” are interspersed in this loose installation of pinned up pictures, to create a realistic scale of a domineering natural world. Chairs, faucets, pears and a pile of manure all dwarf the townspeople, who exist in their ever changing world as almost nostalgic personages.
