“Seelensucht”
Angelika Rinnhoffer’s photographs capture the lighting and composition of Renaissance paintings. Her inspiration for “Seelensucht” comes from mannerist painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio as well as the 19th century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Both of these artists humanized the genre of religious iconography by depicting friends, relatives, and sometimes prostitutes, posing as saints in theatrical settings.
Rinnhoffer photographs contemporary people in the manner of Renaissance portraits of Christian martyrs. The viewer is made aware of the ambiguity of historical portraiture and the subjectivity of art and history, and is forced to examine these unusual depictions of well-known icons. How important are facts, and how reliable are stories and legends? Like Cameron, and Caravaggio before her, Rinnhoffer takes a religion’s icons and creates her own portraits of them. Ironically, historical images themselves have become iconic imagery in our modern society.