I decided on a very personal and subjective approach. The form of the artist’s book and the selection and arrangement of the photographs do not permit any interpretative contextualizing. Rather, they are beholden to their own interests and to the potential of archived documents to reveal fictional events. The resulting presentation enables me to imagine something that repeatedly tries to evade depiction and yet is precisely what makes it possible in the first place: the thing described by the phrase “blind spot” (as a localizing of the subject). It refers to that moment when it is not me looking at the photographs but rather the photographs looking at and selecting me. In that sense, Girlfriends not only documents the encounter with the photographs of an archive but also and above all the echoes they evoke. 

Installation View, Halle 14, Leipzig 2012 
© Produzieren/ Armin Linke 

Girlfriends
2012, artist book
print: Pöge Druck Leipzig
210 × 280 cm, 16 pages
Photos: Selection from the Mende archive