shashasha

Following her first visit to the rural countryside in south-west Germany’s Swabia region in 1989, American artist Collier Schorr began to visit the region each summer for almost twenty years, each time adding to an ongoing series that documents and explores the German cultural imagination and self-image of its countryside, its culture, and its history. In her work, Schorr deliberately crosses the line between fiction and nonfiction, documentary and artifice. With nods to the work of German photographer August Sander almost a hundred years ago, in portraits of women and young men (some asked to wear nazi uniforms, others appearing in underwear or casual clothing), shots of flowers and landscape features, “August” draws up a haunting but poetic vision of the intricate, complex and difficult processes that constitute identity and identity-finding.

For more information on Collier Schorr’s photobook “August” and the series of which it is part, we recommend this Vogue interview with the artist.