MASLOWSKI/GRENZHAEUSER

Days of heaven

Nathalie Grenzhaeuser and Minka Maslowski have been staging themselves in collaborative photographs since 1993, parallel to their work as individual artists.

During their 16 years of collaboration they have realised numerous projects that can now be seen together for the first time in this art book. "Days of heaven" contains twenty photographic series of the duo, that were produced between 1993 and 2008.

Partly spontaneous, partly the result of extensive research, this pair constellation is brought to the image by means of a self-timer. The viewer is perplexed and puzzled. The interaction of the protagonists in their double roles as viewer and actor at the same time gives their photographs the character of a picture puzzle and an ambiguity that can be understood as both an abyss and a horizon.

In each constellation the artists question and fathom anew:

Where do the(se) people come from? Where are they going? How do they relate to one another? Where and in which society are they?
Just as the title, "Days of heaven", in its transparency and transferability neither restricts nor delimits, the personalities in these series appear on the one hand real and on the other afflicted with a fleetingness that emphasises the fragility of each moment.

Over the course of years an extensive image archive has been produced. Malinowski/Grenzhaeuser have gradually started to extract "histories" from it and connect them in a new context and mental space.

Thus a number of "broken stories" emerge from the individual images that lead the reader and viewer again and again to a new "jump into happiness".