Iris Andraschek: Wait Until the Night Is Silent

In her newest artist book, Wait until the Night Is Silent, Austrian photographer Iris Andraschek continues her interest in the changing status and image of young women in the late 20th and early 21st century. Begun during a residency in Durham, Ontario (2002), and completed in 2010 on a return visit, this project depicts a community of people living an alternative back-to-nature existence as a fairy-tale-like communitas. There is a staged presence in Andraschek s images, like Degas s ballerina paintings, as she alternates between reality and fiction in this critique of the work, leisure and consumerist regimes of industrial societies. Andraschek s photographs combine the narrative of the socio-document with a unique artistic fluidity and otherworldly sense of being within her intimate portraits. With contributions from Berlin-based writer Esther Kinsky and the late Martin Chalmers.