The long-standing tradition of the photography symposium "NIDA. Meeting Photography" began its fourth year not with the usual September gathering, but with a spring photography residency. The residency, established together with UAB "Fotosintezė" and the VAA Nida Art Colony in 2022, has already featured Taiwanese artist Chia-Yun Wu, Polish artist Michał Siarek, and Lithuanian Ieva Maslinskaitė, and since May of this year, German photographer Corina Gertz has been a guest at the Curonian Spit.
In her global long-term project The Averted Portrait, Corina Gertz focuses on women in traditional dress and costume as hip portraits from behind against a monochrome black background. With this arrangement, which is repeated in all the portraits and removes body proportions or skin colors from the field of vision, Corina makes clothing and attributes visible as cultural constants that are equally an expression of individuality and belonging in all regions of the world and across generations.
But her subjects remain hidden; the clothing alone communicates. Many of the images are composed of inherited pieces, which hold history and tradition. They are manifestations of the preservation of traditional knowledge, conventions, customs and practices. In Corina’s work, she represents this cultural heritage with respect to craftsmanship, origin, family and social status, and thus reveal something about the identity of the wearer, without revealing their individuality. On the one hand, they are community portraits. On the other hand, through the detailed presentation of the clothing, there is an intimacy with an individual, their aesthetic, political, social and cultural contexts.
Corina Gertz lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. She studied fashion design and designed collections for international labels in Düsseldorf, Florence, Hong Kong, Cape Town and London. From 2013 to 2017, she held teaching positions at the Beijing University of Technology and was a visiting professor at Xijing University in Xi'an, China. Since 2001, Corina's photographs have explored clothing as non-verbal communication - signs of class and status, group affiliations, regional identity, denomination, official function. She has been working on her series The Averted Portrait since 2010. Her work has been exhibited in international museums and galleries such as MARTA Herford, Shanghai Art Museum, National Museum of Singapore, Museo delle Culture del Mondo, Genoa, and White Box Art Center, Beijing.
This year's resident was selected in 2024 from 103 authors and 251 projects.
The photography residency of "NIDA. Meeting Photography" is ensured by UAB "Fotosintezė" and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
