Departure from the Real World
An Interview
with Daniela Steinfeld
From the classroom to disturbing
set-ups situated somewhere between freak and peep show - Daniela
Steinfeld's photography quickly departed from its documentary typologies.
In her recent works, the Becher student has expanded her photographic
oeuvre to include elements of performance and sculpture in an effort to
visualize the internal lives of her figures. Steinfeld's series
"Classroom" is currently touring through Latin America with the exhibition
"More
than Meets the Eye - Art Photography from the Deutsche
Bank Collection." Achim Drucks interviewed the
photographer in her Dusseldorf studio.
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Daniela Steinfeld
Photo:
Achim
Drucks
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Teachers were anything but happy about the way they appear
in Daniela Steinfeld's
photographic series Classroom. Which is understandable, because
they look rather tired and spent, portrayed alone in the pictures or
sitting in dreary classrooms. The series was made at the beginning of
Daniela Steinfeld's education at the Dusseldorf
Art Academy, where she studied with Bernd
Becher and Jan
Dibbets. In her next series Hospital, the photographer quickly
departed from her sober typologies to stage puzzling and absurd situations
in the pathology ward or in front of the photographic wallpaper in the
smoking room - sometimes using hospital personnel, and sometimes friends.
Daniela
Steinfeld, from the series "Klassenzimmer", 1994,
Deutsche
Bank Collection,© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
In
her later works, Steinfeld poses in front of the camera as well,
portraying herself as an alien-like being. She uses very simple materials
to achieve this, altering the appearance of her body with pieces of foam
rubber stuffed into nylon stockings, wrapping herself in shiny metallic
foil, or hiding her face behind ordinary plastic masks found at 99¢ shops.
Currently, she is investigating the origins of photography, working in
black and white and experimenting with baryta
paper and various coloration techniques.
Daniela
Steinfeld, Huntress, 1999-2000,
Courtesy
Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York/Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam,
©Daniela
Steinfeld, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
Daniela
Steinfeld lives and works in Dusseldorf. In 1997 she was an Artist in
Residence at the Chinati Foundation
in Marfa, Texas; in 2002 at the Irish
Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Steinfeld has been showing her work
regularly since 1998 at the Sara
Meltzer Gallery in New York; in addition, she has been running her own
gallery in Dusseldorf since 2002, called Van
Horn after a small village near Marfa on the border between Texas and
Mexico.
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Daniela Steinfeld, from the series
"Klassenzimmer", 1994,
Deutsche
Bank Collection, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
Achim
Drucks: The teachers in your series "Classroom" remind me a lot
of my own years at school. For me, they conjure up that claustrophobic
feeling of the late seventies. "In love with the teacher" doesn't exactly
come to mind.
Daniela Steinfeld: I've never been in love
with any of my teachers [laughs]. I've always had a huge problem with
authority, but only when I found it to be arrogant. In those days, of
course, this came from a very adolescent, rebellious attitude. This work
reflects the experiences I had during my time at school. The teachers
depicted were for the most part the actual teachers I had there. For this
series, I returned to my old school around ten years after graduating. The
same teachers were still all there, and they all looked exactly as they
had ten years previously; even the school had hardly changed.
The
documentary sobriety of this series still strongly recalls the typologies
of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whom you studied with.
The teachers
series is the very first work I made in the Becher class. I was still in
the process of absorbing it all, of course. But I was also still studying
with Jan Dibbets, who was just as important for my work. In the Becher
class, disciplined work exerted a great influence on me. Sticking with
something and researching it thoroughly. It doesn't have so much to do
with the content of the work, but with its form and cogency.
What
role did the current photography scene in Dusseldorf play for you?
None
at all. The nineties scene, in other words Ruff
, Gursky,
Struth,
Hütte,
and so on, was only important for me at the time in so far as I sought to
keep at a clear distance from it. And this is why my work changed so much.
I didn't want to become one of the Becher epigones. I'm not all that
interested in the current photography scene. I don't really think in
categories like "photo scene", but only in terms of art. At the beginning
of the year I had an exhibition of the works of Tracey
Moffat. While her works come from photography, they also go far beyond
it. Or Thomas
Schütte, who photographed his sculptures, which then took on
another life through this. I'm fascinated in artists who use photography.
Or conversely in photographers who don't even think about whether or not
they're making art. Who are simply so good that at some point it becomes
clear that it's art, as with Helmut
Newton.
Daniela
Steinfeld, Raucherzone, from the series "Hospital", 1995,
Courtesy
Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York/Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam,
©Daniela
Steinfeld, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
Daniela
Steinfeld, Preparationssaal, from the series "Hospital", 1995,
Courtesy
Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York/Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam,
©Daniela
Steinfeld, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
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