Herlinde Koelbl. Hair

Hair and the intimate contact with hair accompany people from birth to death; it is always a personal part of our sensory world. In her most recent work, Hair, Herlinde Koelbl 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.