Ina Schoenenburg’s photography revolves around the position of the individual within the context of interpersonal relationships. Schoenenburg is interested in the conflicts experienced by her protagonists and their efforts to address these issues. Her work Flashback (2014) is a series of portraits of German soldiers and veterans affected by post-traumatic stress disorder following their return from Afghanistan, taken in domestic settings together with friends and with family. The series Biester (2011) is an intimate observation of the everyday life of a gay couple with whom she is friends. Schoenenburg’s ongoing work Exchanging Glances (since 2012) is a study of the artist’s family, featuring herself, her daughter, and her parents in their house in the country. In her stylized portrayal of everyday life Schoenenburg presents an intimate visual world beneath whose surface conflicts broil, all the while remaining unknowable to the viewer. Schoenenburg’s father was strongly committed to the socialist political order in East Germany and the collapse of the GDR pitched the family into an existential crisis, an experience which was shared by many others. This experience is still reflected in contemporary debates about the GDR and remains a source of inter-generational conflict twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In these works of biographical portraiture, Schoenenburg explores the transformation of existential social parameters and their impact on the development of individual and family identities.

Images: Ina Schoenenburg, „Blickwechsel“, since 2012

Film // directed by Dörte Grimm * camera, cut: Nadja Smith * sounddesign: Frieder Nagel * production: Nadja Smith