PHOTO Roman

Enriching the genre of the photo-novel, which consists of picture series, short texts and text balloons, Ingeborg Strobl adds her own obsessive journey that leads her ever deeper into the microcosms of Austrian country life. She keeps a gaze of detached acceptance vis-a-vis her perceptions of nature, be they directed at something 'beautiful' or at something 'repelling', lending these phenomena a voice and language that is ironically broken. She ends with the grayness of an empty sky. It is a book that is stringently conceptually structured. It is an uncannily appealing descent into a familiar outer world, with an affinity to both Austrian art and literature with its baroque, melancholy traditions that continue to have an effect to the present.