Oliver Sieber, Düsseldorf-based artist born in 1966, concentrates on portraits. Amongst his series are those about youth culture, teds and mods and their ways of constructing self-confidence by dressing up. Another very straight series is on blind people of different ages and social backgrounds, making the viewer contemplate on their self-confidence. Sieber’s most recent series deals with Cosplayers and their social background. Called “Character Thieves“ it portrays young people dressing like a manga, animation or video game character. Sieber photographs these often perfectionist disguises in different countries. These calm photographs have a quality that also works for people who don’t understand the complex code of Cosplay. This is because the pictures were taken in every day real-life situations, in their bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, balconies, or at the park nearby. There is nothing special about the locations. If you look closer, there are some details that tell you about their cultural and social background and their commitment to comics and anime, but it’s basically just an every day living environment. Because Sieber often uses soft daylight instead of spotlighting the eccentricity of the cosplayers, he suggests that their living space, where their love for Cosplay was born, is not fundamentally different from the space of others. Siebers open-mindedness and ability to accept phenomena by transforming them in a specific yet subtle photographic language is one of the qualities of his work, talking about the world, how it is.
Bodo von Dewitz
Museum Ludwig
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