Claudia Neubert lets her pictures speak for themselves. Whoever looks at her photos opens up another world. “I originally studied sociology,” says the 44-year-old when asked about her career. This is exactly how she sometimes approaches her photographic work. Her documentary-tinged shots, which tell stories on closer inspection. To her two long-term projects, which – in addition to a love of detail – above all require staying power. She sees herself in the role of the observer who completely withdraws from herself. Your pictures should tell a story without judgement.
“I started the photo project ‘On the Edge of the Wheat Field’ around 15 years ago,” says Neubert. The project is still not finished. “Sometimes it takes a break before you can pick up the thread again,” she says. A scholarship will help.
For the first time, houses or farms were no longer passed on to the next generation
Claudia NeubertPotsdam photographer.
Neubert, who was born in Dresden, grew up in a small village between Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. She prefers to keep the name to herself. After reunification, I went to the Black Forest with my parents. She never really felt at home there. What remained was the connection to the place of her childhood, which accompanies her photographic search for clues to the present day. “Hardly anything has changed there for a long time. It was the same houses, farms and people I knew from an early age, the familiar environment where everyone knows everyone.”
Her grandparents’ house, the garden behind the house, neighbors who came to the slaughter party in the barn to slaughter a pig, for example. To then make sausage out of it. Where no one had to lock their front door because there was no need to. “Many of the villagers worked in the surrounding LPGs. There were craftsmen, such as bricklayers or tilers. There was even an old forge, but no shops”. The place with less than a hundred inhabitants was too small for this.
“I kept coming back there,” says Neubert. The result is a long-term photographic reportage. She has portrayed people, the landscape, details that would probably remain hidden to most visitors. Village life changed fundamentally only about five years ago. The younger generations are moving on. “For the first time, houses or farms were no longer passed on to the next generation,” says Neubert. There would also be no one left who still slaughtered large animals.
Your photos testify to the great trust of the villagers. Of a closeness that may only arise from having received interior views. From a knowledge that – even if you are far away – you still somehow carry the DNA of your childhood. Although her parents weren’t actually part of the core of the villagers.
“For example, we never took part in the slaughtering,” says Neubert, who almost poetically captured the steam of scalding a pig with her camera. “Nevertheless, like everyone in the village, we always got a large enamel pot with fresh broth after the slaughter,” she says, her eyes almost shining. She started her series with an analogue camera, later she continued her work with the help of digital photography.
It’s taken me time to gain people’s trust.
Claudia NeubertPotsdam photographer.
For the second long-term project. RÅNE is the title of an extensive photo report that summarizes what Neubert has been working on in Norway since 2017. “Råne means something like: A young person who drives around aimlessly in the car,” says Neubert, who speaks reasonably passable Norwegian. Here, too, her pictures tell more than words could possibly do. “Essentially, it’s about a Norwegian youth culture that has existed since the 1950s,” says the Potsdam resident. Thanks to increasing electromobility, the days are numbered here too.
Search for clues in Norway
Coming to Norway for the first time, she discovered strange rubber marks on the roads everywhere. Even in the most remote places. Wavy lines, squiggles, loops, almost artistically captured as burnout traces on asphalt. When asked about this, the locals told her about the US-American-inspired youth culture, in which groups come together to accelerate on the streets of the Norwegian expanse with ancient – often self-assembled – Amish sleds. In order to leave considerable signs of snaking. Of course, this also includes the right music: Country in Norwegian.
“It took me time to gain the young people’s trust.” Until she was allowed to immerse herself in that world to take pictures that show the extraordinary. Here, too, the trust of the protagonists in the photographer can be felt. For example, when they get together to screw together or sit on the roof of a cruiser with cowboy hats to smoke Marlboro-style. Cowboy feeling in the middle of cold Norway.
Neubert’s heart beats for author photography. In 2018/2019 she graduated from the Ostkreuz School of Photography in Berlin. Even today, she still associates a lot with the attitude that it takes much more to take a successful picture than just the right technique or the right moment.
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