For the last two years I have been asking people to come to my apartment in Berlin to take a series self-portraits while engaging in a simple improvisational score over a set period of time. During their photoshoot session I will prepare an elaborate meal of their choice, and afterwards we'll sit around and talk and drink and eat until the natural light of day disappears. As a photographer, I have always worried about the dynamic between the person behind the camera and the person in front of the lens. This series of photographs attempts to access an ontological state in the subject, devoid of the inherent instinct to perform for an audience. Instead, left alone in a room, the camera orientates the experience according to the attention that each person allows it to have. And then in the following weeks I fuck that concept up completely by imposing an aesthetic onto the images that I select based on my own damn preferences.  

I continue to grapple with how to present this work, how to continue to erase my presence, how to amplify the voices of those that have allowed themselves to be photographed, and how to diminish the importance of the onlooker.

Until I know what to do with all of this, here is a small selection of pics of each person that has been through the process thus far, in chronological order: