Books | NOVIEW |

»NOVIEW« is a critical debate on the theme of techniques of manipulation, examinating the gap between what one can see and what is not shown.

For this project Katrin Thomas has been working with psychoanalyst Dr. Dan Lutzker from New York. Models are being hypnotized within issues of the pop culture and then photographed: they "become" icons of the fashion world or are playfully put into scenic sequences with suggestions like "dieting" or "plastic surgery" to touch base with their emotional being. The photographs of these performances give a glance onto the media world’s subtexts. Photography and Hypnosis are being used as techniques in terms of memory and realization. The question "what can I see" is complemented by the question "what do I want to see". It creates a second Self, a double, which is not drawn from reality. The hypnotized person, like the viewer of a photograph, is able to see images under the hypnotic influence: pictures that are created by the person itself. This is where the analogy of photography and hypnosis becomes obvious: Both, photography and hypnosis are techniques to create images.

The moment that has already passed is being reproduced as an image. The effect of hypnosis is directed inward rather than outward here. In these images hypnosis-actually a rather ‘private’ subject- turns public. Where is the borderline between the private and the public? Who has the right to take photographs of whom? Under which circumstances? These questions evolve and become ever more critical in the face of an ongoing expansion and restructuring of ‘public space’ by our modern communication technologies.