Sabina Diethelm

This is my most intimate and personal work to date: It was during a difficult and emotionally intense time that I created some initial self-portraits, trying to express the grief, anger, followed by hope, and then again helplessness and despair that I was going through at that time in those pictures. But the photographs were too weak, not meaningful enough - I put them aside and banished them from my thoughts, until months later, I found myself at the same (low) point again. Now the old, printed out pictures became the physical surface on which those same feelings were acted out, and thus acquired a whole new layer: ice stretches over spring flowers, the head is on fire, water distorts space and reality… I thus re-enacted what I had experienced at the time on my own self-portraits and re-photographed them. It was only through this repetition that it was possible to give the pictures their true meaning and expressiveness. Images from left to right: 1. Run! 2. Struggling to Stay Afloat 3. Submerged 4. Spring Fever 5. Taste of Love 6. Blossoming in the Dark 7. Head on Fire 8. (No) Light on the Horizon

• Fine Art