Six degrees of freedom

With her latest photographic series Jessica Backhaus examines, universal questions of human existence. Based on her own life story she inquires after the sig- nificance of knowing the roots of one's own existence and to what extent it is possible to re-elaborate these--usually prescribed--roots. With her photographs she symbolically captures the essence of this search and of her life stages. Simultaneously, she pulls off the balancing act of keeping the images open for the beholder. Her photographs possess metaphoric potential and work against the grain of a classic social documentary photography. They alternate between realism and abstraction.

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Jessica Backhaus is regarded as one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary photography in Germany today.
Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin. To date, seven publications to her name; Jesus and the Cherries, 2005, What Still Remains, 2008, One Day in November, 2008, I Wanted to See the World, 2010, ONE DAY- 10 photographers, 2010, Once, still and forever, 2012 and Six degrees of freedom, 2015, all published by Kehrer Verlag. Her photographs are in many prominent art collections including Art Collection Deutsche Borse, Germany, ING Art Collection, Belgium, Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA and the Margulies Collection, Miami, USA.
Jessica Backhaus is represented by Robert Morat Galerie in Hamburg and Berlin, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Galerie Anja Knoess in Cologne, Stieglitz 19 Gallery in Belgium, Wouter van Leeuwen Gallery in Amsterdam and Micamera Gallery in Milan.

Lars Mextorf is a freelance curator and writer based in Berlin.

Caroline von Courten (b. 1983, Germany) is based in Amsterdam. She currently holds the position of research assistant in the field of photography theory at Leiden University, the Netherlands.