I AM
Simone de Beauvoir wanted everything from life. She wanted to “be a woman or even a man.” It was a risk and she took it. It’s about the possibilities this world offers us and the possibilities it denies them. It’s about limitations, happiness and unhappiness, prevarications, achievements and always about self-image. It’s about connecting with your being and specifying what you want and need.
Life means exploring, experimenting, investigating, demanding, sticking at it. Who we are is only revealed when we transcend the public gaze and remain behind, completely by ourselves. Sincere, tender, wise, knowing, self-reliant, free. It’s always the circumstances that teach you how to love and live. That’s why it’s important to know what kind of world you live in.
FAMILY
“No matter what’s happening, no matter how crazy my life or the world is, as soon as I pick up my camera, I’m completely myself. I’m in my element. That’s my identity.” This is photographer Esther Haase’s response to the question of what identity means to her personally. And if we follow her gaze, she offers us another nuance to her interpretation. On the following pages are Esther’s parents, Fritz Haase and Sibylle Haase-Knels, who are looking back at her. Family holds a great deal of power. It’s where we grow up, gain our first experiences, acquire basic skills, learn and bear witness to so much. We carry our family background with us, regardless of where we end up later as adults. In a way, it becomes part of our personality and shapes all our relationships, whether consciously or unconsciously. We can step out of the family circle and into our own conceptions and ideas, but the start of our development always remains with us.
HOME
The place where we feel accepted, where we encourage each other, support each other, catch each other, feel understood, rejoice together, laugh together, cry together. The place where we like being and can develop, where we fall down and don’t have to get back up alone. And all this reminds us how and who we have become because, when we look behind us, our vision is enmeshed with life. All of this is what can be called home. It is the home of our memories, smells, desires and always of ourselves. Somewhere that does not need a roof. A state, rather than a place.
STREET
The street is the place where we bring our own stories to the world. Because we reveal a lot about ourselves through what we wear, how we wear it and why we wear it. Consciously, deliberately, casually, throwing things on, rejecting them – however we do it, on the streets of this world we see and are seen. Everything is real, boundlessly diverse, profoundly individual and personal. Not because we see the trends of the fashion and consumer industry, but because people are always making their own interpretations of all this. On the street, we learn what someone wants to communicate or tell us about themselves through clothing. That’s why this public space is so fascinating and free.
OWN WAY
Freedom is independent, but it is always rooted somewhere. What does the statement “I am free” mean? What does “I” mean? “I” is rooted in culture, in values, in language, in the people who have supported me and continue to do so. It has shaped these same people in the past. All this belongs to me, and this identity alone enables me to understand my freedom. So freedom is not abstract – it’s not an unbridled, rootless, untamed force. This rootedness does not restrict our freedom, rather it is its necessary condition.
As featured in SLEEK 74 – IDENTITY. Available in print and digital here.