Mondsee

Selfportrait in Mother's Dress

Elisabeth Wörndl
Series of 9 B/W prints, passepartout, framed, 28 x 33.5 cm, 1984
40 colourprints, each 23.5 x 32.5 cm, 2012

In 1884 I took part in a workshop led by Friedl Kubelka-Bondy on the subject of "Selfportrait in mother’s dress", in Salzburg College. A subject, which I take up in 2012 in my photographic work the second time. Selfportraits, appear in my photographic works in different contexts over and over again: pictures of computer tomographies of my body (1996), scanned body pictures in connection with city space (1998), blood cells in connection with landscape (2001), X-ray pictures and indoor photographs of my body interfer with pictures of the city space (2007/8).

The personal confrontation with the Self and the mother in front of the camera, the self-staging in mother’s dress, points out a moment of the imaginary identification with the mother. Closeness and distance are put on and off like a dress. With my mother’s dress recollections from my childhood comes up. I went back to the place of my childhood and discovered – outgoing from the clothes of my mother – the garden as an enlarged area which stands in connection with my mother and presents a place of the recollection. This photographic work documents an approach process to my mother, reconciliation, and saying good bye.

This work was part of an exhibition curated by Brigitte Konyen:
Me, myself and them, Künsterhaus Wien, 2012.