Ich denke auch Familienbilder [Signed]

28.7 × 33.7 cm
116 pages, 60 duotone and color ills.
Design: Stefan Stefanescu, Hamburg
Hardcover, printed cloth

The photographs in “Ich denke auch Familienbilder” (I Think Family Pictures Too) deal on various levels with one of the most basic tasks of photography, which is to capture and record memories. Family pictures are photographs that help us remember and often even create memories. They can be images of our own, which only arise in our heads or through stories and our own imagination. Linn Schröder combines these two thoughts in a poetic way and creates pictorial worlds that in their surreal, magical, and often staged imagery tell of astonishment, uncertainty, and perhaps even unease.

Schröder traveled to Poland with her twin daughters and followed the footsteps of her mother-in-law, who had escaped to Germany as a young girl during World War II and passed down her experience in stories. This creates a connection between three generations: the grandmother, the mother and the daughters. She also photographed a befriended family with twins at regular intervals and the boy next door, whom she encounters again and again. Schröder often works in black and white, which gives the images an air of universal validity. Seemingly identical nature shots that repeatedly interrupt the narrative flow reinforce this timelessness. At the same time Linn Schröder’s work points far beyond personal experience. Associative images emerge that tell stories in themselves and tell us something about our humanity. In this artist’s book, these worlds of thought are given an intense, mysteriously dreamlike, and grandiose poetic stage.

Linn Schröder, born in 1977, has been a member of Ostkreuz-Agentur der Fotografen since 2004 and a professor of photography at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg since 2016. “Ich denke auch Familienbilder” is her first book.

Exhibition
Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
April 2–July 4, 2021