Hair and the intimate contact with hair accompany people from birth to death; it is always part of our very personal sensory world. In Herlinde Koelbl's most recent work, Hair, the German photographer succeeds in creating an associative study of this essential identity trait. In a wonderful, subjective photo essay she erases the superficiality of this physical statement: hair becomes a protective shield, a boundary of shame; it is enticement, seduction, or threat; or it becomes dead material mixed into soapsuds. With her talent for precise observation of social processes—already seen in bestsellers Spuren der Macht (Traces of Power), Das deutsche Wohnzimmer (The German Living Room), and Jüdische Porträts (Jewish Portraits)—this new project, on which she spent over six years on four continents, sends us on a provocative, intimate tour of human emotions. (English edition ISBN 978-3-7757-2029-8)
 

Exhibition schedule: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, August 31–November 18, 2007 · Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, March 6–June 15, 2008  · Kunsthalle Rotterdam, October 4–January 2009