Isabelle Graeff
"Exit"

Exhibition: 28 September 2018 – 27 September 2019
Echappée belle, place du marché

Isabelle Graeff moved to England after a death in the family. Coming to terms with significant events in a person’s life requires time for recentering and questioning of identity. The personal circumstances intuitively put the German photographer in tune with the particular atmosphere in a country on the threshold of the Brexit decision.

Her work is not beholden to a specific genre. Isabelle Graeff’s snapshots seem to draw a portrait of the country. Just as the change of seasons introduces a mood shift, so her visual inventory catalogues an atmosphere that portends an upheaval. Perhaps it is merely subjective impressions that retrospectively make the connection between the photographs and Brexit and give the collection its name. But aren’t images always the result of subjective impressions? And isn’t the viewer’s gaze invariably tinted by interpretation?

Viewing it from the other side of political developments, a wholly new portrait emerges, showing a desolate cultural landscape, wide nature shots, austere urbanity and a variety of human faces. Stagnation and change, expectation and wonder, proximity and distance, familiarity and foreignness alternate. The glance towards strangers is fleeting. The alternation of subjects from image to image conveys a feeling of movement through space and progress through time. The photographer lines up impressions like links in a chain. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, these snippets combine to form a full picture between subjective premonition and factual documentation – the freedom of deciphering it is up to the viewer.

More Information: www.editionexit.com