One of the most striking series of work by Wolfram Hahn is A Disenchanted Playroom (2006).
The children shown in this series are watching television. These portraits record the precise moment in which the children, between 3 and 12 years old, show absolutely no impulse or emotion. Engulfed, entranced, the children are no longer active individuals. Rather, they have become passive, fully abandoning themselves to the child-oriented programming playing on the television in front of them.
Another of his series, Into the Light (2009/10) shows that the digital camera has become a permanent companion, used by people to document their everyday life. As the popularity of social networking has grown, self-portraiture has become a common phenomenon, a method of carrying one’s own story into the outside world. Self-portraits have become a kind of language, a shared mode of communication facilitated by the digital camera and computer. These images re-stage self-portraits posted on social networks. They reveal the full scenario that was not visible in the original self-portrait and show the exact moment when the flash of the self portrait goes off, the making of a digital identity that will eventually allow the individual to be included within a broad community while at the same time shut away at home.
Text and photographs copyright Wolfram Hahn. copypasteculture.
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