Tobias Zielony’s (b.1973) work links social reality with protagonists, with the fields of agency of social individuals. Yet which image does his documentary practice draw of these social individuals? Zielony has become well known in recent years with series about young people from Europe and the US; his pictures exemplify the question of the production of the subject in documentary photographic images, what photography still does with the people it depicts.
In the case of his series “Manitoba”—created in Winnipeg, where the adolescent members of a First Nations gang and their urban habitat between Winnipeg and the Reservation are shown—Zielony envisions this space of agency from the perspective of a performativity of imagery.
Published on the occasion of Zielony’s exhibition at MMK Frankfurt, 12 November 2011 – 15 January 2012. With an essay by Andrea Hiott.
APC