SUBSURFACE

Beyond the Surface: A Dive into the Subconscious

SUBSURFACE is project about exploring the hidden depths of the human mind. Under water, the noise of the surroundings disappears, you can’t breathe, your body and mind focus on your inner being … weiter lesen

SUBSURFACE is project about exploring the hidden depths of the human mind. Under water, the noise of the surroundings disappears, you can’t breathe, your body and mind focus on your inner being.

The outside world, social and societal roles, obligations and functions are as if washed away. The body, carried and enveloped by the water, is present.

Reflections, be it through reflective materials, mirrors and the water surface, play a central role in the photo series and serve as symbols of self-perception; Diving beneath the surface to discover what usually remains hidden.

What do you find if you dive beneath the surface, into the depths of your subconscious? There, under the tip of the iceberg, a world full of questions is revealed: Who are we really?

Exploring the complexity of human existence. Like a diver in the depths of the ocean, we become a fish in our own sea.

Even when everything around you is blurry, or precisely because of that, we can still find focus.

There is a positive invisible energy that surrounds, supports and guides us threw life. An energy that gives us plants to eat, sun on our skin, water to drink and that wants us to live.

Franz Kafka so wonderfully expressed in his diary in October 1921:

“It is very conceivable that the splendor of life is always and everywhere fully prepared, but hidden, deep, invisible, very far away. Yet it lies there, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. When you call it by the right word, by the right name, it comes. That is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.”

Kafka’s words capture the mysterious and transformative nature of existence, where hidden wonders await those who seek them.

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Images of SUBSURFACE have been shown in exhibitions at the Arles OFF, at the opening week of the photography festivals,  Les Rencontres de La Photographie, at the gallery la Grande Vitrine, in Arles (France) and at the Angewandte Festival 2024, at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Published in the photo book of the group exhibition ‘Beneath the SURFACE”,  at the Arles Off 2024, by Petra and Thomas Gerwers

Published in the German photography magazine PROFIFOTO 7-8.24