Leo Kandl’s Free Portraits and Susi Krautgartner’s Uncanny Valley at Fotohof

SALZBURG.- Leo Kandl has immersed himself in the genre of portrait photography for several decades, whereby he unites the conceptual documentary process with the subjectivity and individuality of the object.

In „Free Portraits“ Kandl made contact with his models through newspaper advertisements. Cities such as Vienna, London, New York, Tehran, Moscow and Havana became the public backdrop for works that at times give the impression of being snapshots from the streets, or private photographs. Kandl’s style allows the observer to engage with the subject emotionally as the potentially tense meeting of two strangers in role play, the subject and photographer, produces images characterized by curiosity and an occasionally subtle, erotically charged atmosphere.

“Uncanny Valley” is named after a well-known hypothesis of roboticist Masahiro Mori. Mori’s theory describes the empirically measureable effect of an emotional response to non-human entities. Essentially, human-likeness triggers empathy. However, when an almost perfect human-likeness is achieved, strong negative emotions can be detected. Susi Krautgartner invokes this effect through the medium of self-portrait which express familiar role models and stereo types.

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