Stefanie Moshammer<\/a> is the recent winner of the prestigious C\/O Talent Prize 2018 \u2014 an annual prize recognising the outstanding work of a photographer under the age of 35. <\/span>In conjunction with her win, the Austrian image-maker was awarded a solo exhibition, <\/span>entitled <\/span>Stefanie Moshammer: Not just your face honey<\/span><\/i><\/a>, currently on view at C\/O Berlin. The exhibition consists of an enigmatic selection of documentary and snapshot photography, and video imagery taken in Las Vegas between 2014 and 2017. The catalyst for the work on display is a curious one: a typewritten letter that Moshammer received from a stranger declaring his undying \u201clove\u201d for her. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Before you think that this was the start of some loopy love story, think again. Instead, Moshammer presents a stirring interrogation of persona, artifice and surveillance through a compelling edit of digital photographs. After turning up on Moshammer\u2019s doorstep, looking for his ex-girlfriend, a man called Troy sent Moshammer an effusive love letter writing, \u201cHello, hello the Upper Most Incredible, sensational, amazing, and Beautiful girl\/woman or anything I\u2019ve seen! \u2026 Not just your face honey but your voice melted my Heart!\u201d. Rather than being charmed by this stranger’s unabashed gushing, Moshammer tells SLEEK that receiving the letter was \u201cdifficult\u201d \u2014 \u201cI was split in different directions. I didn\u2019t want to give a response, but the person invented me as a woman that I wasn\u2019t.\u201d The letter triggered the prospect of new and different identities for Moshammer, which is why she decided to title the series <\/span>I Can Be Her<\/span><\/i>. \u201cI can be her (the woman constructed in the letter by Troy), but I can also be any other woman as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"12","caption":"\"A truck and a car\", 2017"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":" As a series,<\/span> I Can Be Her<\/span><\/i> has a hermetic quality \u2014 the photographs, which range from surveillance maps pulled from the internet to bulbous cacti and Google Street View screen grabs, are pieces of a puzzle \u2014 visually the series is not so easily explained. The letter, however, is the gateway. In it, Troy offers Moshammer an extravagant life in Las Vegas \u2014 \u201cYou can stay with me at my awesome house anytime \u2026 If you come to live with me I would buy you your own cute, special fast car\u201d. Strewn with lavish promises and hyperbole \u2014 everything is described as \u201camazing\u201d, \u201cfantastic\u201d, \u201cawesome\u201d \u2014 the letter, for Moshammer, is a microcosm of Las Vegas itself. \u201cHe put the place into words. Even without showing any images, he represented the whole thinking about what this place is about\u201d. By this Moshammer means that the letter exemplifies the sense of artifice commonly associated with American culture \u2014 and heightened in the Nevada city \u2014 that stems from the notion of the American dream, the belief that opportunity and good fortune are available to everyone through personal reinvention. \u201cIn Las Vegas, the illusionary part is very prominent: all the fictional characters try to represent something that\u2019s not true,\u201d explains Moshammer. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot about materialism \u2014 there\u2019s a lot of showing off, it\u2019s not very subtle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"blockquote","text":"\"In Las Vegas, the illusionary part is very prominent: all the fictional characters try to represent something that\u2019s not true\u201d","source":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":" \u201cIt\u2019s not so much about a single image here. It\u2019s about narration and the dialogue between the images,\u201d states Moshammer about the conceptual nature of her work. Moshammer\u2019s texturised and vibrant images are best read together as inscrutable chapters within a larger, compelling story. On their own, her images radiate a sense of mystery like fragments of evidence in a criminal case: swirls of tyre marks on concrete hint at a car making a quick getaway, and brightly lit shots of hotel rooms suggest the location of something that has or has not yet taken place. Moshammer regards the series to possess an American “road trip atmosphere”, evident in the images depicting luminous motel signage, petrol pumps and glistening Dodges. Meanwhile, other photographs make commonplace things strange: rock faces assume human-like features, fruits are transformed into bodily orifices, and desert plants become oddly alien-like structures. Through her lens, Moshammer highlights the weirdness in reality: the natural landscape is as strange as the neon, unreal glamour of the Las Vegas strip. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to give a direct feeling of being somewhere,\u201d muses Moshammer. <\/span><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery":false,"settings":{"height":"100","images_to_show":"1","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":" It is easy to see why Moshammer was the winner of C\/O Talent Prize 2018: her photography expresses key ideas of the contemporary period as well as timeless questions on the constructed nature of love and identity captured in a highly saturated, modern manner.<\/span> In the age of Google, PRISM, and Cambridge Analytica, surveillance is a hot topic \u2014\u00a0<\/span>Not just your face honey<\/span><\/i> cleverly taps into the current fear of and acquiescence to being watched. What’s particularly powerful about this series is the way in which Moshammer turns the tables on the individual who encroached on her personal sphere: \u201cHe came into my private space so I turned it around, and when he wrote me his address, I looked up his house and went there and took a photograph. He made me feel weird so I\u2019m turning it around and answering it in my work, not writing him a letter back\u201d. In this sense, not only does the exhibition reveal how easy it is to participate in the surveillance state, but arguably, the series also presents a feminist reversal of patriarchal power plays. In Moshammer\u2019s view, the letter is \u201ca very old-fashioned fuel of how you can get a woman\u201d, and it represents a fiction of her rather that who she really is. \u00a0\u201cI think this is is a very male dominant view. If I would have written him a letter like, \u2018Hey, leave me alone\u2019, it wouldn\u2019t have the same effect.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Much like her work as a whole \u2014\u00a0be sure to check out her earlier series Vegas and She<\/em><\/a> (2014-15) and Land of Black Milk<\/em><\/a> (2016) \u2014 Not Just Your Face Honey<\/em> is a smartly original and timely exploration into fact versus fiction rooted in the shifting narrative of a specific place. <\/span><\/p>\nWhat’s her work about?<\/b><\/h2>\n
What’s her aesthetic like?<\/b><\/h2>\n
Why does her work matter now?<\/b><\/h2>\n