Unverbunden

For the book Unverbunden (Unconnected), Trabandt has collected staged and documentary photographs, produced between 2005 and 2012, and combined them in order to juxtapose her world of theatrical exaggeration against the prosaic grimness of everyday life realities. These images reflect impressions drawn from Trabandt’s sceptical observation of her surroundings and, taken as a whole, spring from her frequently recurring notion that no one is actually connected to anyone else. That the pursuit of happiness is only a hormone-driven selfishness that has controlled us since primeval times and every quest for connection is doomed to failure due to this pervasive, animal-like compulsiveness. While they are not exactly romantic, these photographic confrontations are not as bleak as one might think. If nothing else, they serve to illustrate that a mutual feeling of unconnectedness is, in itself, a connection.