Portraits 2001
98 photocopies
Steinhöfel lies some 50 km east of Berlin. An old library stands next to the castle in the middle of the spacious layout of the castle grounds. The library was built in the second half of the seventeenth century by the lord of the castle von Massow and contained 3800 books. Most of them were burned in World War II. But 800 books survived this catastrophe and are housed in the Cathedral of St. Mary’s in Fürstenwalde.
For this portrait series, I chose about 100 titles from the index of the still extant library of von Massow. Each book took shape as a face with a different expression, as each was printed in the most disparate fonts. The group portraits on the wall resemble the souls of books that materialize before us out of the past.