Philipp Weber’s picture subjects are created at photo shooting sessions with professional models. The deportment and pose of the women are specified directly by the artist – however, the decisive moment for the artistic interpretation lies within the non-presented.
It is a moment of stillness during which the pose adopted remains purely extrinsic behind the model’s facial expression, the aura of the woman. It is the endeavour to capture a person’s reality that lies beyond that which is manifest. And by including the names of the woman in the picture title Philipp Weber underlines this aspect.
Consequently the models do not freeze in their function as objects of consumer society, but undermine the presentation and find themselves as real human beings in a staged environment. In a manner of speaking a humanization of the objects occurs.
Moreover in Philipp Weber’s works the culturally moulded ideal identity of female functions contrasts with the vehemently ruptured reality, which fluctuates between naturalness and the faked: princesses glide through sombre, undefined places, are banished to cloud castles in a fantastic hortus conclusus (Princesses – Tatiana and Sabine).
Cheerleaders hold melancholically next to each other (Cheerleaders 4 – Stephanie and Nina), kiss each other almost with benediction due to the onerous task of cheerleading, appear rather lost in rooms far away from any conviction of victory (Cheerleaders 5 – Nina). Elves are carried on dragonfly wings to the world of Peter Pan and huntresses (The Hunt – Ulrike) stylishly span their crossbows against a background that rather resembles the sfumato of an ideal Poussin landscape than hunting grounds of life and death.
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The search for clarity and any outward references leads us back to square one. The protagonists in Philipp Weber’s pictures are always enshrouded in melancholy, which on the one side underlines the beauty, but on the other also edges them into a sphere of inaccessibility.