One day a young photographer encounters a woman in the street. To be more precise, she’s seen the woman a number of times before, but they don’t yet know each other. Each time the stranger is dressed differently, and the artist is intrigued by this, sensing that the woman possesses a certain kind of interesting intensity.

Milou Abel, the young photographer, gets to know the woman better and photographs her for over two years in her house full of clothes and old pictures. Some of the things are from the model’s youth – she once posed for fashion photographs. The rest are mostly clothes found in second-hand stores. At the exhibition at the ZPAF Gallery viewers can see the documentation of this style “session” – a mix of past and present. Abel’s pictures show how the possibility of expression provided by clothes transforms into an obsession shared by the two women – the photographer and the model. The whole time they’re probably accompanied by a third, invisible woman, about whom they do not wish to talk to outsiders. The nested structure of the photography book in which the artist enclosed the project, and whose form informs the exhibit, makes it possible to discover the successive images of the woman and to get to know her more deeply. This is, however, a dangerous journey. As Abel herself says, she was not always sure whether she would be able to come back to normal life after leaving her protagonist and friend’s house. 

  

Dutch artist. Her photobook Ik ben jou won the 2011 Dummy Award at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel, Germany, and was subsequently published by Abel herself in a limited edition. She lives and works in Rotterdam.

  

Place:

ZPAF Gallery

ul. Św. Tomasza 24

Vernissage: 18.05.2013, 13:00

Open: 18.05–16.06; WED–SUN 15:00–21:00 

FREE ENTRY