CIRCLE1 has invited two very different Berlin-based artists, Anastasia Khoroshilova and Noga Shtainer, to exhibit their recent photographic works. Khoroshilova, born in 1978 in Moscow, graduated from a German boarding school and studied art at the Folkwang University in Duisburg/Essen under Jörg Sasse. She teaches at the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia in Moscow. Shtainer was born in 1982 in Safed (Israel) and grew up in a Moshav, studied photography at the Wizo Academy of Design and Education in Haifa and completed her studies at the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin-Weissensee.

The two artists only first met during the preparation of the exhibition. They share their interest in the people they represent, but they differ in their personal motivation, the camera technology and the way of presenting pictures. For Noga Shtainer, it is originally the proximity of privacy to intimate, which at the same time, she perceives as something universally human, whereas Anastasia Khoroshilova portrays exemplary people whose lives are marked by certain contemporary events and circumstances.

Near the entrance, Noga Shtainer shows images of "institutionalized children" and a nurse. They come from a home for orphans and other children needing care (home for special children) in Rivne, Ukraine. To the right of that and titled „Menschen ohne Territorium“ (people without a territory) are four images (from a series of six) by Anastasia Khoroshilova. Being displayed are young, homeless people fighting for survival in Moscow.

In the back room, Khoroshilova’s "a Prayer" hangs on the right, which is a rather incidental colored image sequence of winter landscapes and images of a fatherless family that emigrated from a Central Asian Republic living illegally near Moscow. Opposite that, are some black and white photographs of the children's home in Rivne by Shtainer.

On the other side of the corridor, in the narrow room usually reserved for video projection, a sequence of unframed proofs from the studios of the artists are on display. These are selected preliminary examples of many open projects, which at the same time, can be regarded as generally insightful for the actual, linguistically artistic themes indicated in the works of both artists. "There was a sea here before" comments Khoroshilova on the remains of a gradually disappearing Russian environment that is preserved in her color photos. Shtainer forms parables for the scary feeling of being abandoned and threatened with her very different black and white photos. She calls it "Homesick".

During the talks with the artists, a question came up that remained unanswered and, therefore, should be forwarded here to the public.

It reads: What does it mean to be photographed?

Jürgen Harten
Berlin, September 2016
From German: Raymond Romanos