The presentation at Paris Internationale 2021 unites works by Anna McCarthy and Anna Vogel that explore the relationship between nature/landscape and humankind. Anna Vogel covers the absence of humans, evoking prehistoric or post-apocalyptic land-, sky- and seascapes. What did the world look like before there were any humans to document it? Or what will it look like once we are all gone? Anna McCarthy on the other hand looks into the balance of power between humans and nature and our strange desire to conquer and control even the most extreme places like Alpine mountains; transferring these behaviors ultimately through her own aesthetics into moving images.

Anna McCarthy’s (*1981) work oscillates between genres. She constantly seeks new forms to express topics that have collective relevancy as well as personal urgency. Her work is quick and dirty. Improvised and raw, charged with personal experience as a reflection of wider topics. Her sharp intellect and wit challenge the status quo, always laughing, together with the viewer, in the face of fear. Her methods of production mirror the content – cheap materials, reusables, always in flux. She possesses a talent to astutely comment societal ongoings whilst refraining from preaching, subtly dismantling power constructs as she goes. Her work is a modern-day amalgam of multilayered readings that take the viewer into a narration that weaves in and out of thought patterns in those similar to one’s own.

Anna Vogel (*1981) creates photos or combinations of photography, drawing and print, thematically dealing with digital communication, nature, history and biology. The investigation of these topics is accompanied by a richly imaginative playing with the medium of photography that self confidently transcends the traditional borders of the genre. Vogel took some of the photographs on which her works are based herself; she found others online or created them herself digitally. Her subjects undergo a large number of analog and digital processes of image editing. She retouches certain visual elements or alters the pictorial composition. She makes use of traditional collage technique, expands the photographic space with the help of drafting tools and is not afraid to scratch the picture surface in a mechanical way. Upon a small space, with often succinct means, and without clearly revealing what exactly is being shown, Vogel’s works achieve an astounding auratic impact while setting in motion perceptual irritations and doubt. They show a world, which remains in the realms of vagueness. Landscapes that seem somehow familiar, but then again not. Settings that are known from somewhere, but nonetheless remain foreign, conveying a melancholic energy that oscillates between desire and discomfort.