A street as an art gallery.

Marcel Meyer is a media design student at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz and lives in the Klarastrasse, one of the anonymous roads lined with post-war utilitarian buildings that meander out of the pedestrian precinct.

He has 22 shops as neighbours.

No chains, all specialists, traditional, many owner-operated.

The thesis for his semester project was that the person that you encounter in a shop is almost anonymous –  incidental to the transaction and without a clear profile.

Out of focus.

To emphasise this, he photographed the person (owner, employee) with a medium format analogue camera against the background of the shop.

The shop’s in focus, the person isn’t.

He then photographed the subject  – this time in focus and in their environment – digitally, with their out-of-focus portrait in the background.

This week, every shop in the road is an art gallery, with the original image on display.

He’s also got a small shop (No 2, just behind Kaufhof) as a gallery.

Until tomorrow.

If you miss it, here’s his website

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And here’s a good one:

Marcel was saying that he felt a bit out of place in Café Gerster.

“You know” he said “It’s a bit of a Granny café…..?”

“So you’ll know how I feel in the “Annabatterie“, then..” I said.

19 Aug This entry was published on 19 August, 2011 at 00:01. It’s filed under Art, Mainz, People and tagged FH Mainz, Klarastrasse, Marcel Meyer, You work where I live. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.