Franziska Strauss - Street Photographs 2005–2015

About

Up to now, the young photographer Franziska Strauss has shown in her exhibitions in our gallery, at Neue Sächsische Galerie – Museum for contemporary art Chemnitz, and at Kunstverein Böblingen only one body of work, albeit one that is comprehensive and plays a key role in her oe uvre: her dance photographs. Curators, collectors, and critics immediately appreciated the outstanding quality of these photographs, and in 2011 she received the Reinhart Wolf Preis for her series Reckoner / I killed my dinner with karate (which was part of her first solo show), and her series Vert, shown early in 2013 in her second solo show, was exhibited in that same year in an extended version at Neue Sächsische Galerie.

As early as 2005, Franziska Strauss started taking her camera as a constant companion on her explorations of cities like New York, Paris, and New Orleans, as well as of rural regions in Europe and the US: "I started with street photography when I left my hometown Cottbus to move to Chicago. I had already been taking pictures for a couple of years. All of a sudden I was overcome by an unexpectedly strong urge to harness the flood of new impressions and feelings, and alongside it the seemingly faster passing of time. The sensation of everything running through my hands like sand gave rise to a kind of panic, which only the camera could channel into something whose personal and cultural implications are forming over time." 

Inspired by path-breaking masters of street photography like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martin Parr, or Diane Arbus, she goes out to seek mental paths that are not accessible by the intellect alone.

In her third solo show at the Berlin gallery Egbert Baqué Contemporary, Franziska Strauss is showing for the first time a selection of 50 of these street photographs, shot between 2005 and 2015.