Zoom Magazine, Juli / August 07

by Cristina Franzoni

Claudia Rogge, a German photographer from Düsseldorf, is attracted by the human mass. In her works, it takes on a rare aesthetic fascination and her philosophy is a direct challenge to those who see nothing more in nameless masses than a statistic, a silent number or, worse, a distasteful magma from which one has to emerge to be “someone”. The great mass is often associated with negative moments or unhappy concepts such as slavery, genetic experimentation, dictatorships, the plague, or concentration camps. Claudia Rogge explains that, on the contrary, masses of people can be strong and, above all, beautiful.

Interview:

Zoom: Your latest series, Uniform, portrays, in a serial manner, naked men and women who often curl up like animals or gather together like enlarged insects. Their faces remain inexpressive, dehumanized. Yet, their beauty seduces our eyes. it is as though the idea of the homogeneous mass both fascinates and disturbs you at the same time. The individual aspects which characterize each person are missing. everybody seems humiliated and without a name.

CR: The idea behind “Uniform” is to classify individuals according to so-called prototypes, i.e., different characters, which, irrespective of cultural affiliation or period, continuously recur. By identifying certain role models, I made up twelve types, which establish the basis for the series “Uniform”. These are “the agitator”, “the icon”, “the relevant”, “the follower”—individual marks like tattoos or others, that are used to affix characteristic traits, and actually affix the role models themselves.
However, even the greatest individualist reveals the role patterns his personality is comprised of. The fascination the theme “mass” exerts on me lies both in the content as well as in the formal and aesthetic aspect. As regards content, it is indeed exciting to live in a time that on the one hand trains people for absolute individuality, but an individuality that is defined by mass media, mass consumption, mass tourism etc. Aesthetically, the patterns and rhythms developed from masses are unique. You can find them in shoals and flocking birds as well as in major gatherings like military parades, processions, concerts etc. Regarding this, I do not resort to already existing masses in my works, but simulate my own.

Zoom: The robots in the flesh who silently populate your photos seem to have been discharged from a lunatic asylum after lobotomy and electroshock. No stimulus at all. Chronic state of apathy. Dead men walking. is your work supposed to be a criticism of the excesses of globalization and consumption or, on the contrary, is your aim to be polemical an controversial?

CR.: This is quite an interesting description of my works. But they do not take on a pedagogical or, even less-so, any preaching approach. My works arise only from the above-mentioned interest, while provoking the connotations you just described and causing the viewer to examine those questions. I think this is a good effect because the issue is a contemporary one. Certainly it is exciting to observe the difference between the firm conviction of total individuality and the process of formation of opinion performed by mass media. Being residents of a metropolis we are already
part of a crowd (in the streets, the underground tunnels, etc.), but the mass media convinces each person of his or her individuality: you have your own individual interior design, a customized planned vacation trip, your own individual fashion style.
Demonstrating your individuality requires an incredible tour de force:
Clothing, hairstyles, all are means aimed at emphasizing uniqueness within a faceless society.

Zoom: Claudia, I would like to compliment you on your excellent composition the colors you choose and the aesthetic interaction of geometric symmetries. Can you perhaps tell us something about your technical tricks?

CR.: Thank you very much. As I have already mentioned, I do not copy already existing images of masses. The people you can see in my works have been shot separately in my studio in different positions and movements.
“Uniform” consists of about 10,000 single shots I have digitally masked and which help me in then staging my own masses. All pictures of the series are without space and scenery. It is only the composition of the different figures that creates the impression of spatiality. The advantage in being the designer of the masses myself is of course the possibility to define them in terms of color, shape and arrangement. I do not like the colorful mixed masses in a stadium for example, I am more interested in monochrome masses, in the aesthetics of uniformity. Of course, my approach requires an enormous effort and the difficulty of generating a mass that has to appear genuine and believable while being completely artificial.

Zoom: Am I right in saying that traditional modes of portraying are the complete opposite of your genre? You absolutely underscore the importance of the individuality of each single, unique person. here the focus is on the tidy army of manikins with no name, no story, no destiny.

CR.: Surely I am not focused on featuring the single person, whereas the classic portrait is the absolute way of emphasizing the individual.
I, in contrast, am working with the borderline cases, where the single begins to vanish into the crowd, until it is generated into a pattern or ornament.
There are different criteria that play a role in our perception, of which the question of view certainly does have a vital importance: The bigger and coarser the section, the more unitary the perception. A wide angle onto a mass shot during a football game causes the single individual to disappear.
All the individuals become a single body.
But if the section becomes closer and more focused, the perception of that image is of course a more concrete, detailed and individual one. Marketing research and statistics are based on this principle, as well. In order to receive universally valid conclusions and definitions of target groups, individuals are examined in terms of the groups they belong to: the elderly, singles,
Germans, voters etc.
In the context of studies like these, what is special, individual is leveled out and what emerges is an average person, the homme moyen. As you can see, I am not interested in names, private stories or biographies, but in the stereotype, what is exemplary, recurring. In this sense, even the greatest dictator—which with the passing of time is recognized as unique—is yet definable as a mere role which can be found in a manifold manner throughout the history of mankind. In the long run I am interested in our paradigms, our perceptual patterns and images of evaluation, which, for example, enable the human being to accept current fashion as well as the guillotine and dictatorship at the same time, while today we have already adapted to new trends without being able to comprehend the major convictions underlying them.