KARNEVAL IM ALTERSHEIM

As a conscientious objector in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s, Thomas Schütte was required to perform community service in a retirement home. Today, Schütte is one of Germany’s best-known sculptors and draftsmen, but back then he was just a long-haired young man who “simply didn’t want to be bullied by anyone anymore.” One of his first artistic projects began in the retirement home. Using a Pentax SLR camera with flash, Schütte photographed every resident in the home over a period of one year. The result is a total of 14 rolls of film, one photo per person. With these images, the artist travels back to the 1970s, to the countryside, to the home. With his photographs, long believed to be lost, Thomas Schütte shows unadorned what could come, what always was, and what is passing away.