People are far too often lonely and far too rarely alone. People who are forced into loneliness because of a life crisis very often despair. But there are also people who seek self-imposed loneliness in order to find themselves or because they can no longer hear their own voice. Like all the images in the series Kokon, this composition also depicts the search for the inner self. This time the ...

The short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman inspired me to create the picture composition of the same name. The story is about a young woman who seeks relaxation in a summer house. As time goes by, however, the room with the yellow wallpaper increasingly frightens her. “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” said Sir Winston Churchill. I abstract this mutual ...

We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us.

The composition Papier from the series Kokon symbolizes the importance of books for human self-discovery. In the performance, the protagonist sits in an otherwise empty room to discover the wisdom and truth in the printed word. He is immersed in Robert Louis Stevenson's short story The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to explore the question of identity. I was inspired by the book Cleaver ...

The room alone is not enough to give people a sense of security and safety. Only the designed and lived room forms the home. A person's living space can also be seen as an extended body, so to speak, with which the person identifies with his or her real body. The intimate connection between the human being and the room is shown in the way he is influenced by the room and his being changes ...

We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us.

Most of my creation and thinking comes from the confusion I face in my life and expressing my desire for life is one of my sources of motivation. When I am in an intimate relationship, I realize that both parties sometimes impose their will on each other, and the other party will choose to accommodate, in order to maintain this relationship. I think this is common in intimate relationships, and ...

We’re featuring what our Issue 15 guest editors have been up to since the issue was released at Paris Photo in November 2022. Each of our 50 guest editors on the issue selected an image by an artist from our international open call to feature in a spread next to an image of their own in Issue 15. To see their work in the issue order your copy. Our guest editor Gabby Laurent’s personal photography ...

Augustine described love as desire or longing, which is often associated with death. When people set a time limit and unit for love, they often use words like “infinite” which is the embodiment of love as desire or longing. Nevertheless, good things are doomed to disappear, and desire is always associated with death. When love is abstractly understood as the embodiment of all good things, its ...

Robert Morat is the gallery owner and founder of Robert Morat Galerie. The gallery pri­mar­ily fo­cused on emerg­ing artists in con­tem­po­rary pho­tog­ra­phy and photo-based art. Founded in Ham­burg, the gallery has since moved to Berlin and is now lo­cated on Lin­ien­strasse in the Mitte art dis­trict. Morat was a guest curator for Guest Room in 2015. Francesca, our Community Manager, caught up ...

For some physical reasons I can't go out to shoot very often, and I stay at home most of the time. During my long time at home, I start to find some other meanings for the objects in my life, and there is no doubt that those meanings are given by me. I put those objects together as I wanted to, to say what I wanted to say.

I adore writing and photography a lot, and sometimes I tell a story in both ways, which makes me realize something interesting; pictures and words have the same obscure and romantic elements in conveying information. Someone's sentiment is complex, and sometimes it is difficult to tell them in a logical way, but obscurity and abstraction can solve this problem.

We’re featuring what our Issue 15 guest editors have been up to since the issue was released at Paris Photo in November 2022. Each of our 50 guest editors on the issue selected an image by an artist from our international open call to feature in a spread next to an image of their own in Issue 15. To see their work in the issue order your copy. Our guest editor Pixy Liao’s work has garnered ...

I would like to break things with obvious symbols and reorganize them. The stacking of different elements can always produce something new. What prompted me to do this is that the current world is chaotic and pluralistic and the old order in the past is constantly broken. What is different from the previous world is that each of us is establishing our own rules at the moment, which is of course a ...

Sometimes I look up at the moon, thinking about the difference between ancient people and us. In ancient times, many myths and legends about the moon were born. At that time, the moon was a god, in charge of water and growth. Now we only regard it as the nearest planet and just want to get on it.

As the sun began to set, golden light shimmered across the delicate wings of a butterfly that had become ensnared in a cobweb. My wife Ellie was quick to point out the beauty of the scene, urging me to capture it with my camera. As I focused on the wings, I couldn't help but be reminded of the photograph of my mother's hands, and the fleeting nature of life. With Ellie's hand serving as a ...

Our community manager interviewed Thana Faroq, one of the talents Der Greif nominated to join FUTURES in 2022. They spoke about Faroq's practice and how she utilizes writing in her work.

On the night of mom's birthday. I was visiting my brother and his family after getting the courage to ask if he could help me take a photo. My brother complied and posed for a shot in which he was holding an archived photo of mom and dad when they were younger. As we were preparing to take it, my niece walked in and excitedly asked what we were doing. I told her we were taking a family photo, and ...

We’re featuring what our Issue 15 guest editors have been up to since the issue was released at Paris Photo in November 2022. Each of our 50 guest editors on the issue selected an image by an artist from our international open call to feature in a spread next to an image of their own in Issue 15. To see their work in the issue order your copy. Our guest editor Tobias Zielony is known for his ...

A profound sense of emptiness pervaded my family following the loss of my mother, and we each coped with it in our own way. While my brother focused on his own family responsibilities, our father felt it was best to remove any trace of Mom from the house as quickly as possible. Over the next months, her presence gradually disappeared, leaving behind only fading memories. However, there was one ...

The bedroom was adorned with a mirror that had been in my mother's family for generations. As the sun began to rise, its rays gently illuminated the room and reflected an image of my future wife, Ellie, in the antique glass. We were in the midst of my mother's final days, yet we were trying to maintain some semblance of routine. Two days later, my mother would pass. On the day of my mother's ...

We’re featuring what our Issue 15 guest editors have been up to since the issue was released at Paris Photo in November 2022. Each of our 50 guest editors on the issue selected an image by an artist from our international open call to feature in a spread next to an image of their own in Issue 15. To see their work in the issue order your copy. Our guest editor Pacifico Silano explores print ...

Not long after I arrived home, my mom was out of surgery and on hospice rest. She was barely eating and couldn’t really speak. Prior to her relapse, I had often asked to take her photo, but she usually declined, feeling self-conscious about her appearance. I was afraid that I would regret not being able to capture a photo of her, so I suggested an alternative approach - taking a portrait of her ...

It was a morning of bright sunlight as it streamed through the window of my apartment, casting a shadow of my jasmine plant above a double portrait of my grandparents. This particular morning, I received a call that my mother had collapsed trying to get out of bed and was having emergency surgery done. Having been in another state at the time, I needed to rush and catch a last-minute flight ...

Over the course of my life, I have often felt detached from my home to the point of feeling like an outsider even among my own family. To cope with these depressive feelings, I often use art as a means of detaching myself from my emotions. Leaving home made me realize how meaningful it was to me, and how much I desired to connect with my family. Towards the end of 2020, my mother's cancer ...