"The rooms that she generates through her photographs of models are not only the rooms of their former occupants...they are also the artist's own rooms"
-Maren Lubbke-Tidow
Lubbke-Tidow, M. (2007) "Spatial Sense"
Anna Lehmann-Brauns: Sun in an Empty Room, 59-61.
The essay published along with Anna Lehmann-Brauns' series, Sun in an Empty Room looks back at her early student work in order to appreciate her current photographs. Author Maren Lubbke-Tidow relates that Anna's student work was much different than that of her peers in Germany; while others were focusing on conceptual documentary self-portraits, she created miniature model interiors, which stood in for people in her life. She injected each constructed space with a personality and christened each image with a person's name as a title. Anna drew from her own experiences with these individuals, the memories she has of them to fashion her interiors. It is more evident in some images (for instance the boy's bedroom titled, "Sebastian") why she decided to title them after an individual. One photograph displays a vibrant red bathroom complete with a tub bubbling over, curiously named "Mamma". Many of her photos go beyond just the owners' own living space and ask just what it is that we remember of someone. The author can relate to the more obscure spaces, commenting that the smell of a certain brand of soap instantly evokes memories of summers with her grandparents. These rooms function as spaces within the artist's mind, revealing intimate recollections of the people in her life.
When working on my series of interiors, I try to find elements that elicit strong memories for me. I attempt to give life to these areas with objects that I introduce to the scene, or with those that I come across that are already in place. The quality of the lighting, in addition to the physical elements in the photographs help me place my own stamp on the locations.
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