It is surprising to come across a book in which every page, every image gently arouses strong emotions in you. The desire to turn the page to see and feel again fights against the regret of letting go what you just saw and felt.
Aiko is the latest photobook of the Berlin photographer Florian Hetz.
It’s a visual diary with photos mostly shoot in 2020 during the pandemic.
It’s an intimate journey through life, loss, and the personal feelings of the photographer after his father’s death.
It’s a poetic book, where the themes of death, sorrow, fear, sexuality, and lust are evoked with tenderness.
“There are phases of life that make it hard to say what day, week, even month it is at any given moment – phases that feel like a life packed in wadding, that feel as though you are surrounded by a dense fog that parts only at certain moments, and only then can you see what is going on around you.”
(Schreiber, Daniel, “Liminal Experiences”. In Hetz, Florian. Aiko. Vienna: Paper Affairs Publishers, 2020, p. 11-13)
The sensation of suspended lives is rendered through the images of naked and isolated male bodies in isolated interiors dialoguing with empty streets and wilting flowers. Feelings emerge through the attention for the unusual, for forms and details, for light and shadows; a constant balance between death and life, between sorrow and hope, leading to release.
“What emerges in the interaction of these works is nothing less than a ballad of mourning, loss and death, of isolated bodies, nakedness and traces of closeness, of tentatively-determined confidence. A ballad of time lost and gained. A ballad of life lived.”
(Schreiber, Daniel, “Liminal Experiences”. In Hetz, Florian. Aiko. Vienna: Paper Affairs Publishers, 2020, p. 11-13)
AIKO, the title of this book, is an acronym of the German Aufgeben ist keine Option (“Giving up is not an option”) in English. It contains a delicate message and reflection for all of us, we cannot avoid the painful phases of life, we are called to live them, accept them, abandoning certainties and getting a new hopeful perspective on our own life.
Hetz, Florian. Aiko. Vienna: Paper Affairs Publishers, 2020
[Lorenza Conti]
Aiko is the latest photobook of the Berlin photographer Florian Hetz.
It’s a visual diary with photos mostly shoot in 2020 during the pandemic.
It’s an intimate journey through life, loss, and the personal feelings of the photographer after his father’s death.
It’s a poetic book, where the themes of death, sorrow, fear, sexuality, and lust are evoked with tenderness.
“There are phases of life that make it hard to say what day, week, even month it is at any given moment – phases that feel like a life packed in wadding, that feel as though you are surrounded by a dense fog that parts only at certain moments, and only then can you see what is going on around you.”
(Schreiber, Daniel, “Liminal Experiences”. In Hetz, Florian. Aiko. Vienna: Paper Affairs Publishers, 2020, p. 11-13)
The sensation of suspended lives is rendered through the images of naked and isolated male bodies in isolated interiors dialoguing with empty streets and wilting flowers. Feelings emerge through the attention for the unusual, for forms and details, for light and shadows; a constant balance between death and life, between sorrow and hope, leading to release.
“What emerges in the interaction of these works is nothing less than a ballad of mourning, loss and death, of isolated bodies, nakedness and traces of closeness, of tentatively-determined confidence. A ballad of time lost and gained. A ballad of life lived.”
(Schreiber, Daniel, “Liminal Experiences”. In Hetz, Florian. Aiko. Vienna: Paper Affairs Publishers, 2020, p. 11-13)
AIKO, the title of this book, is an acronym of the German Aufgeben ist keine Option (“Giving up is not an option”) in English. It contains a delicate message and reflection for all of us, we cannot avoid the painful phases of life, we are called to live them, accept them, abandoning certainties and getting a new hopeful perspective on our own life.
Hetz, Florian. Aiko. Vienna: Paper Affairs Publishers, 2020
[Lorenza Conti]