Florian Hetz: Unusual experiences
Florian Hetz (b. 1980, Germany) uses photography in a process of mapping, navigating his life and his milieu through visual artifacts. Having suffered encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, Hetz鈥檚 memory was significantly affected and he was left with extensive memory loss. Photography served as a tool to mitigate this and ultimately provided a point of departure for his practice. This accounts for the fragmented nature of Hetz鈥檚 work, which is suggestive of its link to memory.
Susan Sontag aptly stated that 鈥榩hotographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal鈥�, Hetz鈥檚 awareness of this is strikingly visible in his work. He doesn鈥檛 attempt to disguise the photographs as depictions of reality or truth. Rather, he constructs almost painterly images through his use of composition, lighting, and color schemes. Hetz conflates memory and desire, seeking to uproot and visualize hidden desires that are commonly experienced by people with nonconforming sexual or gender identities, thereby also contributing to the canon of queer cultural memory. He aims to take up space and underscore these desires, presenting them in a tender and sensual way, whilst nonetheless remaining confrontational. The viewer is supposed to stare, not look away.
Hetz's practice emphasizes sensuality and tactility; in unusual experiences, he seeks to further explore these themes. This appeal to the senses is thematically recurring in Hetz's body of work, stating that viewers should be able to feel as though they could almost touch and smell the subjects of his photographs. The intimate manner in which subjects are depicted extends beyond the photographs of bodies, Hetz draws similarities between his human and non-human subjects through compositional and stylistic consistency, allowing these non-human subjects the same tenderness and tactility as their counterparts. In doing so, he establishes a link between these seemingly unrelated subjects. Through his subjects and their framing, Hetz counters socio-cultural conventions of portraiture as well as challenging and playing with the idea of masculinity as derived from a heteronormative framework. Consequently, he facilitates a space wherein the viewer can navigate these themes in a meaningful way.
In unusual experiences, Hetz will present viewers with familiar and unfamiliar fragments. The individual photographs form a coherent whole when presented alongside each other and they start to seem suggestive of a narrative.
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Florian Hetz (b. 1980, Germany) uses photography in a process of mapping, navigating his life and his milieu through visual artifacts. Having suffered encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, Hetz鈥檚 memory was significantly affected and he was left with extensive memory loss. Photography served as a tool to mitigate this and ultimately provided a point of departure for his practice. This accounts for the fragmented nature of Hetz鈥檚 work, which is suggestive of its link to memory.
Susan Sontag aptly stated that 鈥榩hotographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal鈥�, Hetz鈥檚 awareness of this is strikingly visible in his work. He doesn鈥檛 attempt to disguise the photographs as depictions of reality or truth. Rather, he constructs almost painterly images through his use of composition, lighting, and color schemes. Hetz conflates memory and desire, seeking to uproot and visualize hidden desires that are commonly experienced by people with nonconforming sexual or gender identities, thereby also contributing to the canon of queer cultural memory. He aims to take up space and underscore these desires, presenting them in a tender and sensual way, whilst nonetheless remaining confrontational. The viewer is supposed to stare, not look away.
Hetz's practice emphasizes sensuality and tactility; in unusual experiences, he seeks to further explore these themes. This appeal to the senses is thematically recurring in Hetz's body of work, stating that viewers should be able to feel as though they could almost touch and smell the subjects of his photographs. The intimate manner in which subjects are depicted extends beyond the photographs of bodies, Hetz draws similarities between his human and non-human subjects through compositional and stylistic consistency, allowing these non-human subjects the same tenderness and tactility as their counterparts. In doing so, he establishes a link between these seemingly unrelated subjects. Through his subjects and their framing, Hetz counters socio-cultural conventions of portraiture as well as challenging and playing with the idea of masculinity as derived from a heteronormative framework. Consequently, he facilitates a space wherein the viewer can navigate these themes in a meaningful way.
In unusual experiences, Hetz will present viewers with familiar and unfamiliar fragments. The individual photographs form a coherent whole when presented alongside each other and they start to seem suggestive of a narrative.
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