Vater und Kind (Father and Child)

Ongoing series, currently ca. 80 photographs, dimensions variable
Long-term project, since 2007

This project documents the growing-up of my daughter and her being together with her father, my husband. Rather than dramatic moments or strong emotions, the pictures show everyday, ordinary scenes of leisurely and unspectacular being together with a child.

The project documents the growing-up of my daughter and her being together with her father, my husband. The focus is on the relationship between father and child. What does it mean to accompany a child as it grows up? How does one spend time with a child? What is the relation between closeness and distance, protecting and allowing to become independent? When does being together give rise to a shared world, and when does each remain in his/her own?

When a baby is born, a program starts unfolding: the biological program of the child’s development, growing and getting taller, the step-by-step unfolding of his/her abilities and interests. At the same time, what we do with a child—which games we play, how we set ourselves up and organize ourselves as a family, where we live and where we spend our vacations—is not only personal but also shaped to a large degree by societal factors, depending on our cultural and social milieu and our economic means.

Advertising, parenting, and women’s magazines operate with idealized images of children and families. Private photo albums capture special events in the life of a family. Social documentary photography, on the other hand, often concentrates on difficult, conflictual situations, on strenuous routine and dysfunctional conditions. In the pictures of my own family, rather than dramatic moments or strong emotions, I document everyday, ordinary scenes of leisuerly and unspectacular being together with a child. “Vater und Kind” shows a father who takes time for his child. In my view, having time, being present, is a central aspect of the work of raising a child. There is a special fulfilment in this. At the same time, being present in this way is strenuous, monotonous in its daily repetition, and talking and playing with a child is sometimes tedious.

In a photographic series, the viewer moves in the flux of time, which cannot be depicted as such, arising instead from the gaps between the individual moments captured. In “Vater und Kind”, two different ways of experiencing time overlap: time as a regular repetition of mundane activities, as a circular process, and time as a linear, ongoing development—the child’s growing up, evolving, getting taller, complemented by the slower, less noticeable process of the father’s ageing.

Shot in a “documentary style,” using a comparatively sober and reserved visual idiom, the pictures maintain a certain distance to the two protagonists. Their private sphere is preserved, a world of their own—each individually and together as father and daughter—which the mother observes from outside, as a photographer, and to which she has only limited access. The two figures move in their own “film,” a film that emerges in the documenting observation of everyday life and that is also constructed via the photographer’s attitude and her photographic decisions. Due to the camera’s distanced position, the spaces inhabited by the subjects become visible. The long shots and medium long shots capture not only faces, but also the positions of the bodies in these spaces. Gestures and postures show relationship as a “pas de deux,” as a constant movement of closeness and distance, speaking and touching, turning towards or away from one another. The familiar situations open up a visual space to the viewer in which s/he can reflect his/her own experiences, memories, and notions of “father” and “child.” In addition, the series raises the question of what we expect of a mother’s view of her loved ones.