“My work is about people and the relationship of the body to architecture and space,” explains Austrian-born photographer and filmmaker Anja Hitzenberger, who shot the images featured in Take-Out, her upcoming show at New York’s UNDERLINE Gallery, during a recent two-month residency in Beijing. “When I discovered these food stalls in the Olympic Park there, I was really intrigued by these small, totally artificial confined spaces. The way the saturated visual displays of the food stalls contrasted with the boredom of the workers inspired me very much.”
How did her seemingly apathetic subjects react to having their portraits taken? “Most of them simply stared beyond the camera, others smiled at me and wanted me to buy the food they were offering, and many never looked up from what they were doing and didn’t actually notice that they were being photographed,” she says. Lucky for us, there’s nothing boring about the resulting images. Click through to preview a selection of work from Hitzenberger’s solo show, which you can check out in person beginning on April 5th.
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger
Photo credit: Anja Hitzenberger