Collier Schorr:
After the After
(August in Germany)

Collier Schorr, Dominik. Study for soldier gathering apples with large hands.,
from August (MACK, 2022). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Collier Schorr's artistic work is characterized by personal references. This approach is expressed not only in the themes of her image series, but also in the formal references of her photographs. Both elements have their interconnected roots in Germany, both in the history of the country and in the history of photography written here. In this open conversation, Collier Schorr provides an insight into her artistic development, which is currently manifested in the just-released publication August. In a way that is as haunting as it is poetic, she draws the viewer's attention to August Sander's portraits of soldiers, which are relatively rarely seen and discussed.

Collier Schorr's photographic work crosses the line between documentation and fiction. Her subjects are allegorically conceived. Through them, since the 1980s, the photographer navigates along the trail of questions in search of an entirety reflected in the concept of identity. By introducing autobiographical references and a post-appropriation aesthetic into her practice, Collier Schorr's work negotiates the fluid nature of authorship and performance in relation to the portrait.

The talk with Collier Schorr will take place online and will be streamed live at Salon des Amateurs.

BIO

Collier Schorr has exhibited her work at internationally renowned institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; LUMA Foundation, Arles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow; Le Consortium, Dijon; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kunstwerke Berlin; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Collier Schorr studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

REVIEW

It's a warm early summer's day. The Salon des Amateurs nightclub, the legendary living room of Düsseldorf's art scene, is slowly filling up with people. Academy students, artists and other creatives gather on the terrace. After a little while everyone is slowly moving inside to attend a lecture by internationally renowned photographer Collier Schorr. There is a lot to talk about. At first glance, the mood seems relaxed. The social restrictions and the social distancing that the coronavirus pandemic has brought are almost forgotten. But in its place comes the shock of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A closer look reveals an underlying hesitancy that is due to the complexity of a politically unmanageable situation. How can the German cultural scene react to a war that has just broken out in Europe? How can we open up spaces for discourse in which we avoid to only reproduce images of war, death and destruction? How can art overcome a simplistic narrative? And in general, how can we manage to talk about the events from the safe distance in which we all find ourselves here and now, on a warm day in June in the Salon des Amateurs, without creating redundant empty phrases? These are the questions that circulate before the talk begins.

Into this geopolitical situation, Collier Schorr is releasing a publication entitled "August". In this publication, the artist, who was born in 1963 and lives and works in New York, refers to a group of portraits that August Sander took of soldiers during the Second World War. In Schorr's book, very young and very attractive men pose in uniforms. They playfully take on the role of soldiers. They do it out of their privileged, " westernised" position. It is a kind of naive re-enactment in the form of a childish war game. In her book, Collier Schorr stages a touchingly youthful tenderness that brings her close to a potential for violence. This violence could originate from the bodies or burst upon them. The artist introduces her audience to the idea that these carefree and free people could become war material under new political circumstances. Her photographs impressively show how individuals are moulded by the social circumstances surrounding them. And they speak about the iconisation and sexualisation of soldiers, the men depicted consistently look like fashion models striking seductive poses. The game of war becomes a romanticised gesture, as is increasingly visible and tangible in our present day. Despite - or perhaps because of - their great aesthetic potential, the images leave a bitter taste behind.

The lecture performance by Collier Schorr, which is followed by a long question and answer session, takes place via Zoom. This is also part of the new reality at the end of the pandemic. A projector projects the transmission onto a large screen, in front of which everyone has now taken their seats. The photographer appears in a casual outfit, as if she had just left her studio and was welcoming everyone in the relaxed atmosphere of her private flat. A world star who is accessible, with no airs and graces and no hesitation to include personal stories in her presentation, on which her artistic photographic works are based.

Collier Schorr's interest in German photography and art history, but also in the German past in general, is no coincidence. After all, she is Jewish. She was born in NY, but her parents are originally from Germany. Some of her relatives, such as her cousin, whom she portrayed for a series in 1992, still live here. She once said in an interview about her relationship to Germany:

"I had these ideas about modern West Germany. It was quiet. It was empty. The figures were small, or they were art students lined up in front of coloured squares of paper. What I saw in the works of Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff was somehow perfect, organised, static, empty of air." [1]

Collier Schor speaks about these references now too. She talks about the necessity of having her work placed both in the fashion scene and in the art world. Especially because she was able to establish herself quickly in fashion photography. For a long time, the art world did not understand that her artistic work had a lot to do with the Düsseldorf School of Photography, that she was interested in the compatibility of the described emptiness and the examination of (above all) German history and that she continued to think about the conceptuality of Bernd and Hilla Becher and their students by trying to integrate people, emotions and historical references into her work. From this investigation emerges a Jewish, but also queer perspective on Germany and German photographic history, which is still underrepresented today. With these reflections, Schorr has fully arrived at the Salon des Amateurs, despite the ocean that lies between her and the audience.

Collier Schorr's comments on soldiering strike a chord with the times and reflect the situation we find ourselves in. Far removed from the front lines that run through the whole of Ukraine and thus through Europe at this moment, our ideas turn out to be sometimes superficial speculations about the war. What we can do instead, it becomes clear, is to reflect on our own position(s). For art can be an effective means of visualising ambivalences in visual worlds and depicting things for which we still lack the words.

Curation and text: Ania Kolyszko

Collier Schorr:After the After (August in Germany)

Collier Schorr:
After the After
(August in Germany)