Seiichi Furuya – I prefer to be on this side

“In her, I can see the woman that passes in front of my eyes, I can see the model, sometimes the woman I love, and at other times the shape of the woman inside me. I feel that it is my duty to keep on photographing the woman who has so many meanings for me. By facing her, by photographing her, and then by seeing her in the photographs, it is like seeing myself at the same time, discovering myself.” So writes the Japanese, Graz-based photographer Seiichi Furuya about the thousands of portraits of Christine Gößler that he took over the course of seven years. In his second show with the gallery, Furuya shows a selection of these images alongside his series “Staatsgrenze” (State Border), photos taken from 1981 to 1983 at the Austrian border to the former states of the Eastern Block. While the media focus at the time remained on the border inside Germany and the separation of Berlin, Furuya was looking for images in the more inconspicuous, sometimes even idyllic borderlands around Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Czech Republic. His connection of places and their stories is an impressive and rare document, shaped by the counter-play between private and political, between personal gaze and documentary distance.