Project

The Chosen Ones

Hendrik Zeitler

Doi: https://doi.org/10.47659/m6.043.2.pro

Vol. 4, no. 1
2019
May 1, 2020

Hendrik Zeitler, born in 1975 in Hamm, Germany, lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. He studied photography at the universities in Dortmund, Germany and in Gothenburg, Sweden, and holds a master’s degree in 2003. He has exhibited internationally, including the international art biennial in Gothenburg, Artipelag and CFF in Stockholm, the Nordic Watercolour Museum and at Hippolyte gallery in Helsinki. Since 2011, Zeitler has self-published four books with the publisher Journal Photobooks, and has contributed to a number of other books. Two of these were nominated for the Swedish Photobook award and two won the annual award for Swedish book design. Hendrik Zeitler currently works as a teacher at the Valand Academy of Arts in Gothenburg and is a board member of the Swedish Association of Professional Photographers, Swedish Photobook authors, Hammarkullen Konsthall, Gallery Box and the festival Photobook Gbg. In 2019, he also participated in an artistic research project about cameraless photography.

I started working with the images in my series The Chosen Ones in 2002, completing it in 2015. Originally, I was driven by the idea to take pictures of individuals who don’t even have any understanding of being depicted. And by the question if the images could still be perceived as portraits lacking one of the cornerstones of portrait photography – agreement between the photographer and the subject as manifested through direct eye contact with the camera. After some time, I started working with animals in the dairy industry – cows, calves and a bulls. I moved my large format camera and my studio lighting to the places where they spend most of their lives, being part of a system that promises in its advertisement that there is “always summer and they’re always more than willing to give their milk to us humans,” as Camilla Flodin writes in her text “In the eyes of the other” that accompanies the book The Chosen Ones published in 2016.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0330. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0330*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0349. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0349*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0354. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0354*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0362. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0362*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0365. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0365*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0366. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0366*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0368. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0368*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0372. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0372*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0473. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 0473*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 1123. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 1123*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 1126. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 1126*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 1279. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 1279*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 1942. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 1942*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 1985. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 1985*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 3254. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 3254*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 5342. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 5342*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 5354. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 5354*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 5464. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 5464*.

Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 5491. — Hendrik Zeitler: *The Chosen Ones, no. 5491*.

Cover photo: Hendrik Zeitler: The Chosen Ones, no. 0473.

Originally, I was driven by the idea to take pictures of individuals who don't even have any understanding of being depicted.

Similar

By subject: backdrop, engaged, identity, nonhuman

Book

The Bone Algorithm

Spirit is a Bone by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Jasna Jernejšek

Facial recognition technology, which seeks to identify the shape of the skull beneath the skin and tissue of the face, is based on the assumption that it can be anything that occurs on the surface of the face, a potential camouflage, while the bone structure underneath it is impossible or at least very difficult to transform.

Interview

If There is No Community, There is No City

Interview with Murat Germen

Iza Pevec, Murat Germen

If artistic creation can be considered as an astral trip to the outer space, planning and architecture education taught me how to come back to the Earth.

Interview

Keeping a Story Alive

Interview with Lukas Birk

Iza Pevec, Lukas Birk

In Myanmar, which was a completely closed country, they projected photographs of New York or Singapore or Japan onto backdrops and then people would pose like your regular 1990s young kid with a skateboard and a Sony Walkman which were both inaccessible in Myanmar.

Article

Photo Circle

A Short History of the Nepal Picture Library

Alisha Sett

The pedagogical practices that can be undertaken through photographs can only be imagined on a mass scale when access to images to images is made easy, and when publishers and editors begin to give them weight. This is where the open archive, the bottom up archive, the archive for all becomes a beginning.

Interview

Backdrops

Conversation with Chris Pinney

Christopher Pinney, Paolo Silvio Harald Favéro

Studios seem to be transformative places where people could act out new forms of identity in advance of society.

Interview

Photography Is the Only Art Form That We All Do

Interview with Martin Parr

Jasna Jernejšek, Martin Parr

The problem is that photography is very glamorous and people think it is a shortcut to produce work.

Article

A Nostalgic Longing for the 20th Century

Past and Present Backdrops and Scenes in the Skylight Studio of Josip Pelikan

Helena Vogelsang Novak

Among the Josip Pelikan's rich preserved legacy, the skylight studio presents us with painted backdrops with various portraiture motifs.

Article

Taxidermy as a Cultural Object

Notes on Preservation, Death and Art

Montse Morcate

Death, preservation and the uncanny are key elements to understanding and addressing both the appeal and/or disgust which many feel towards taxidermy.