Foreword

by Klaus Honnef

Anyone who, like me, is not inclined to have a particularly intimate relationship with oneself must find a project like “Time Travelers” by Petra Gerwers unusual and somehow fascinating. In fact, it invites us to take a journey into our own past – not just a journey of thought – but by addressing a letter to our own person. However, not in now-time, which is already past, when I mentioned it a moment ago. The pivotal point in this context is rather a portrait for which the time traveler has once posed in front of the camera or has been captured by a camera in a certain position. Since I have only a few pictures from my school and student days and never look at them, it was not easy for me to find a corresponding picture. So, I addressed my letter to the person in this picture, in my case a boy of about 15 years.

In short, I was suddenly confronted with a situation that I have avoided until now, for reasons I did not know. But on the other hand, Petra Gerwers already had me on the fishing hook, and I was, without intending to, already mentally on a journey to myself. However, I did not feel that I had much connection with the addressee of my letter. Although no one else than I was; more precisely – according to Roland Barthes – has been. Nor did the non-relationship change after the letter was completed. This may be different with other time travelers. Nor can I say that I dislike the boy in the early portrait, not at all, he rather seems foreign like the time back then. He even looked better than I thought. Nor can I say that the portrait reminded me of an unfortunate past, on the contrary. Nor, however, to a memorable one, although the years at the humanistic Gymnasium in Aachen, the renowned Kaiser Karl Gymnasium, went very turbulent.

But I’ve never been interested in subjective memories. My view was always straight ahead instead of backwards, as it has long since become a cliché. However, I am happy to admit that Petra Gerwer’s “Time Travelers” is one of the few artistic projects that has touched me so much that I decided, without thinking too much, to get involved in her initiative. I can’t give a reasonable reason for that. But this shows me that the photographer has hit a certain point, and I can imagine that the passengers who, like me, set out on the journey into their own selves felt the same way. In this I see the specific quality of the project, and I therefore wish “Time Traveler” the viewers and readers in particular, who have preserved a weakness for the extraordinary.

Epilogue

by Wolfgang Zurborn

Photographic portraits can be created from very different motivations. On the one hand, there is a belief in being able to create an authentic, true image of the human being, while on the other hand, doubts about it lead to photographic stagings, concepts and experiments that emphasize rather fragile constructions of identities in portrait photography. Whereas August Sander, with his hyper-precise objective photographs of people, formulated the claim to be able to represent the entire psychology of the depicted in one photograph, Richard Avedon says of his portraits, also photographed with extreme precision: “It’s all fiction, never make the mistake to think it’s reality.”

Where on the scale between authenticity and fiction are Petra Gerwers' images of humanity in the photo project “Time Travelers”?

 She does not trust to be able to create a clear picture of her protagonists just with a photograph of the present. Only the combination of the created portraits with children’s pictures of the depicted and the letters they write to themselves as the former child they once were breaks down the frozen images of the people. The longings and fears expressed in the lines, rational and emotional advice for the future are reflected in the faces of those portrayed as children and adults. However, it is not possible to read clear messages, rather hints of life plans.

The photographer’s core interest is communication with her fellow human beings, and this requires an artistic concept that shows them in a complex network of relationships that is subject to constant change in a living process. Her portraits with multi-layered reflections liberate people from a static representation of their personality and allow a glimpse behind the facade. In her project there is no system of order in which people are integrated. They are not sorted by professional, political, social, or cultural groupings. Petra Gerwers chooses her protagonists purely subjectively and it is all about the personal “time travel” of people who have aroused her interest.

I am very happy to be part of this selection, even if I myself found it a great challenge. One’s own biography can be defined in very different ways. When I was asked to write a letter to myself as a 10-year-old boy and looked at family pictures from the mid-60s in a dusty album, the retrospective view of my own life as a straightforward design began to crumble. But I did not see this as a deficiency, but as the actual formulation of a consciousness for itself. The special quality of Petra Gerwers' work “Time Travelers” lies in the sensitization for this process of self-discovery.