Love Me For Less
Love Me For Less is an ongoing project which Heiner L. Beisert started two and a half years ago. Heiner is a German visual artist, commissioned photojournalist, and fine art photographer. He has recently been shortlisted for OD Photo Prize 2022, presenting his work in the OD Gallery online exhibition. With the project, Love Me For Less, Heiner decided to research the near-death experience through the prisms of personal past events and symbolism.
As he explains, “In what I believe to be an extensive, topographic study of the tactile, I want to present a distinctive unnerving experience. In multifaceted arrays of structure and light, I compose for the surreal and yet mundane — opting for disorientation, mimicking an OBE.” By working with black and white images and a large-format view camera, Heiner strives to reach the unattainable, to create an atmosphere that goes beyond every day in the most human quest — of finding answers. We speak with Heiner about the questions that guide the project, working with subjects in the story to create the required physical and abstract environments, and the importance of symbolism in the project.
‘I was interested in the idea of transcending the limited human body and its perception of the world's canvases to an extent where the strict differentiation between what is physical matter and what is not becomes inconsequential.’
Love Me For Less is an ongoing body of work I started around two and a half years ago. It revolves around the phenomenon of out-of-body, near-death experiences (OBE) and the connection I have with them — inspired by traumatic events of my past that make this series so intimate to me. In what I believe to be an extensive, topographic study of the tactile, I want to present a distinctive unnerving experience. In multifaceted arrays of structure and light, I compose for the surreal and yet mundane — opting for disorientation, mimicking an OBE. I was interested in the idea of transcending the limited human body and its perception of the world's canvases to an extent where the strict differentiation between what is physical matter and what is not becomes inconsequential.
What the title — Love Me For Less — refers to is a primal urge to gain understanding. It's a calling for knowledge on why one has to grieve, suffer and face one's physical boundaries with the spiritual entity that makes us up being delivered to its fate within. The longer I work on it, the more I come to realize that questions that have guided me throughout this body of work start to become blurry from time to time. Sometimes all that is left is to make peace with one's inevitable demise regardless of age.
‘Most of what I photograph is not really the subject of the picture itself. I tend to lean into the matter of non-places to abstract my photographic subjects to an extent that removes them from time and space just enough so I can carefully, almost surgically, place them in the story behind the photograph.’
I concentrated on the manifestation of abstract interactions between humans and their respective environments to an extent that tries to emphasize the strict inner lining within what makes up the human mind with all its boundaries — only to try and surpass said boundaries in this body of work. A beauty that is quickly undercut, disturbed by a cast of characters who seem unwilling or unable to play along — whether that might happen in a landscape photograph or a portrait. The question that guided me, driven by my interest in the phenomena of out-of-body experiences, has always been steady throughout my process: What lies beneath our own consciousness and the structural array of chaos hidden within?
I should give credit to Marc Augé at this point as well. His anthropological concept of so-called 'non-places' has made all the difference for me concerning this body of work. The idea of conceptualizing a pattern of places in my work that fulfill — at least some — aspects of an anthropological non-place, has always acted as a means to access abstract narratives in my work. Most of what I photograph is not really the subject of the picture itself. I tend to lean into the matter of non-places to abstract my photographic subjects to an extent that removes them from time and space just enough so I can carefully, almost surgically, place them in the story behind the photograph.
‘From my experience, for example, I found out that the best way to depict something that is not visible is to resort to symbolism. That allows me to decide how to place an emotion, a psychological discovery about me, or a project with some iconographic context in the work that others can access.’
In a sterile, almost clinical fashion, I, as always, worked entirely film-based, utilizing my large-format view camera for the most part, which has provided me with its own set of struggles that I had to overcome. In my decision to photograph the abstract, you could say, non-materialized aspects of society and human thought, I might’ve chosen a path that sounds a lot more challenging than it would have to be, but I find that to be too simple of an answer. From my experience, for example, I found out that the best way to depict something that is not visible is to resort to symbolism. That allows me to decide how to place an emotion, a psychological discovery about me, or a project with some iconographic context in the work that others can access.
