After Heidrun’s death in 2009, Irina Ruppert witnesses how her household is being cleared out. Among the things that are being given away is a collection of 280 hand shaped objects and over 200 diaries and photo albums. She speaks up for keeping the legacy and begins to photographically document the hand collection – ashtrays, vases, pendants, bookends, chairs, candles, and sculptures like little hands with missing fingers or something that looks like a man’s hand that has been sawn off. She also reads Heidrun’s diaries: about her early childhood in Gdansk (told by Heidrun’s mother and father), their escape to Oldenburg, schooldays and adolescence, and finally about her years of study in Frankfurt and starting her own family. The photographer, whose leading motif in her work are topics such as home, origin and identity, is now faced with tangible questions at which she takes a closer look: Is there a connection between escape and the necessity of having to leave everything behind and the wish to find security by collecting objects? Why is someone particularly fascinated by hands? Irina Ruppert makes the decision on one hand to show the hands in their physicality, on a long table, completely disorderly; on the other hand, she intends to create entirely new and distinct contexts by photographing the objects, very purely, in front of a neutral background. Picture series such as „Diary 1953–1974” reflect her insight into Heidrun’s life through the symbolism of the hands. This work doesn’t provide a definite answer, but – without following a linear story and without using a lot of biographical information – it creates a feel for life. It raises questions, and touches despite all abstraction and mysteriousness, and it triggers a multitude of associations. It remains in the eye of the beholder if „Heidrun” is being perceived as the fate of a single person, or more so might depict the personality profile of an entire generation or era. Peter Luley 2017
Port 25, Mannheim, 2017