Benjamin Rinner

The photographer Benjamin Rinner, who participated in a master class with Professor Timm Rautert at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, provides us with a new interpretation of photographic portraits with these images of representative persons from a German city. Rinner turned each person’s viewpoint back onto themselves; this was the point of departure for the portrait. The portrayed persons stood in front of a mirror and used a self-timing camera and were thus directly involved in the creative process of the work and actively defined their portrayal. The characterisation of these people through their professions, within an environment defined by the photographer, led to neutral portraits. Furthermore, these pictures refer to the fraught relationship between the responsibility of the participants in the creation of their own image and the multi-layered forms of representation.