GEISSLER/SANN

(Germany, b. 1970, b. 1968)

In the series Horses, photographers Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann tap into the visual and cultural traditions that these animals have historically been party to. As dual symbols of both freedom and conquest, the horses of these photographs are rendered portrait-style: faces cropped against a stark black background. Humanized, then fetishized, the equine subjects of the works are stripped of all naturalness and physicality.

Beate Geissler was born in Neuendettelsau, Germany, in 1970. She studied photography at the Staatliche Fachakademie fur Fotodesign in Munich and then attended the Staatliche Hochschule fur Gestaltung, in Karlsruhe, studying under Thomas Struth, Candida Hofer and Gunther Rambow. Oliver Sann was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1968; he started working as a photography assistant for Hugh Ashley Rayner in Bath, Great Britain, then attended the Staatliche Fachakademie fur Fotodesign in Munich studying photography. He graduated from the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne. Their work has been included in exhibitions at Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst, Berlin; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Gallery ftc, Berlin; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; among others.