lost faces'
the ´lost faces-series' is a serial of large-sized portraits of homeless people from different towns all over the world.
The fact that in many, especially very touristy towns and cities hardly any homeless people are seen, gave Thomas Riess the idea to visit large cities and look for these people. The much discussed general ban on begging, the deportation into tolerated zones and thus deliberate ghettoising of people who already stand on the edge of society draw a distorted picture of society and bear evidence of today's way of dealing with the topic of poverty.
In this project, Thomas Riess uses portrait painting – a genre filled with a strong, representative function and mostly reserved for the upper classes. “lost faces” is a series of large-sized portraits of selected “personages from the edge”. They are removed from their original labour situation – a familiar and very often ugly picture to us – and transferred into a different local context. The portrayed persons, who this way assume a completely different human identity, are intended thus to become representatives for various fringe groups of marginal social significance.
The fact that in many, especially very touristy towns and cities hardly any homeless people are seen, gave Thomas Riess the idea to visit large cities and look for these people. The much discussed general ban on begging, the deportation into tolerated zones and thus deliberate ghettoising of people who already stand on the edge of society draw a distorted picture of society and bear evidence of today's way of dealing with the topic of poverty.
In this project, Thomas Riess uses portrait painting – a genre filled with a strong, representative function and mostly reserved for the upper classes. “lost faces” is a series of large-sized portraits of selected “personages from the edge”. They are removed from their original labour situation – a familiar and very often ugly picture to us – and transferred into a different local context. The portrayed persons, who this way assume a completely different human identity, are intended thus to become representatives for various fringe groups of marginal social significance.
