Tobias Zielony
Tobias Zielony’s critical approach to social documentarism makes him one of the most discussed artists in contemporary German photography. He first trained his lens on the outer edges of Western prosperity in 2000. Many of his early subjects were teenagers, striking poses that imitated the blueprints of the movie and music industries with their meticulously staged dreams of the good life: visions of self-determination and resistance, grand gestures, and communities that stick together; pipe dreams that recur in the aspirational self-conceptions of many of the people Zielony meets. But the gulf between illusions and realities, between fantasies of heroism and the suburban settings remains, and his subject’s faces bear the melancholy mark of the discrepancy.
Comprising fifty photographs, a film, and an audio play, Manitoba is Tobias Zielony’s most extensive project. The teenagers whose pictures he has taken in the Canadian province of Manitoba since 2008 are the children and grandchildren of those who survived the government’s system of assimilation. Many of them are just as cut off from any path toward integration into Canadian society as from the histories of their forebears, which was usually transmitted in the form of oral traditions and died out together with the banned …
Tobias Zielony’s critical approach to social documentarism makes him one of the most discussed artists in contemporary German photography. He first trained his lens on the outer edges of Western prosperity in 2000. Many of his early subjects were teenagers, striking poses that imitated the blueprints of the movie and music industries with their meticulously staged dreams of the good life: visions of self-determination and resistance, grand gestures, and communities that stick together; pipe dreams that recur in the aspirational self-conceptions of many of the people Zielony meets. But the gulf between illusions and realities, between fantasies of heroism and the suburban settings remains, and his subject’s faces bear the melancholy mark of the discrepancy.
Comprising fifty photographs, a film, and an audio play, Manitoba is Tobias Zielony’s most extensive project. The teenagers whose pictures he has taken in the Canadian province of Manitoba since 2008 are the children and grandchildren of those who survived the government’s system of assimilation. Many of them are just as cut off from any path toward integration into Canadian society as from the histories of their forebears, which was usually transmitted in the form of oral traditions and died out together with the banned dialects. The short film The Deboard (2008) conveys the account of an aboriginal who was a member of an indigenous gang in the Winnipeg prison. The Super 8 camera barely makes him out in the dark of his cell as he tells the dramatic story of how he broke free. It sounds like the stuff of legend–truth and epic fiction are hard to tell apart.
Solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at C/O Berlin, Kunstverein Hamburg, Folkwang Museum Essen, MMK Zollamt Frankfurt, Camera Austria Graz, and Berlinische Galerie. He was selected for the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2015.
