In the middle, between us, infinite possibilities

by Laura De Marco

Petra Stavast is an artist who, over a more than twenty-year career, has used her practice to explore one of photography’s quintessential aspects: the encounter with the other, with someone beyond oneself. She has done so with the remarkable intuition of someone who knows where to look for those universal elements that connect all personal life stories—family ties, interpersonal relationships, life’s unexpected turns, the ongoing search for self. She recognizes in seemingly insignificant details or events the potential to construct a narrative far more relevant and complex than even its protagonists might realize. Her external gaze is both sensitive and eager to understand these stories, to investigate and return them, project after project, in a continuous outward-looking process that ultimately informs her own existence.

Excavating personal photographic archives and portrait photography are fundamental elements of Stavast’s artistic practice, alongside extensive research to determine the best approach to reconstructing the complexity of the protagonists in the stories she dedicates herself to. Two key projects exemplify this approach: Libero (Roma Publication, 2009) and Ramya (Roma Publication, 2014)—both titled after individuals. These works are lengthy, intricate journeys into the lives of Libero Greco, the son of post-war Italian immigrants from Calabria to the United States, and Anneke, a Dutch woman better known as Ramya, whose turbulent past shaped an unusual life.

However, with Stavast’s latest work—exhibited within the walls of Spazio Labo’ and published by Roma Publication in 2022—something different occurs. Even from the title, there is a marked shift in approach: S75, an impersonal and ambiguous code that seems to lack a personal dimension. And yet, even here, there is an implicit reference to a potential proper name. Who or what is S75?
The Siemens S75 was the first mobile phone with an integrated camera that Stavast ever used—an instrument seemingly far removed from her artistic practice, which has always favored medium and large-format analog photography. She encountered it almost by chance in 2005, when Siemens sent her a test model. Initially skeptical of the tiny device, she began using it while working in China, taking portraits of the people she traveled with. Despite her reluctance and confusion toward such a small and seemingly inadequate digital tool—with a maximum resolution of just 1280×960 pixels, even then considered problematic for a photographer of her caliber—she realized upon returning to the Netherlands that something new and particular had emerged from those sessions.

Due to the limitations of the device, it was impossible to take portraits in bright light. As a result, the sessions took place in intimate, dimly lit settings, and the ten-second self-timer—set by Stavast for greater image stability—became the most significant part of the process. In those ten seconds, Stavast discovered an almost magical quality, a transformative power for both herself and the person in front of her. This marked the beginning of S75 as a long-term project involving at least 244 people over fifteen years, in different parts of the world.
The series of images in S75 forms a human landscape composed of faces, emerging from darkness at varying proximities—some almost ghostly, yet all vividly present. Each person responds to those ten seconds of waiting before the automatic shutter clicks, with the simple expectation of saying, “Here I am” to the tiny camera before them.
Here lies the essence of photography for Petra Stavast: a process, a ritual, a practice that immerses us in the individual complexity and beauty of human existence—even within the span of just ten seconds.

With S75, there is a shift from seeking encounters retrospectively—recovering archives, memories, and testimonies, where the living recount the lives of the dead—to immediate and tangible contact with her subjects. Stavast moves from a photography that dialogues with pre-existing images to a direct, serial, and repetitive practice—pure gesture, sheer joy of the act.
For Stavast, this step was necessary as a photographer. What appears to be an exercise in style is, in fact, a profound and unexpected test of her understanding of photography as a medium and of that crucial moment of exchange between the person holding the camera and the one being portrayed and, in some way, narrated.

It is particularly significant that this transition occurred through a rejection of traditional photographic formality and fine art photography in favor of immediacy, unpredictability, and the inherent randomness of the most ephemeral digital photography technology: the mobile phone.
This time, Stavast places herself directly within the work, sharing a confined space—both physically (her improvised studios in Amsterdam, Banff, and Shanghai) and temporally—with her subjects. She is vulnerable in front of them, equipped with only minimal gear, seeking to meet people more literally, quickly, and directly—people who fascinate her and in whom she recognizes the narrative potential that defines her gaze.If this time the project’s title references the object that mediates the relationship between people—the photographic instrument—rather than the people themselves, it is because of the emphasis on process over outcome.

A process that Stavast tests on herself as well, occasionally taking self-portraits in the few minutes before a subject arrives. She does so to place herself in their position, to understand their discomfort, fear, fragility, stiffness, or willingness to share something of themselves—or even just the illusion of doing so. Because ultimately, when flipping through S75, we do not truly know whom we are looking at. We see only names accompanying these faces, but perhaps, through them, we can recognize a collective we, or even a glimmer of ourselves.

The limitations of photographic technology are a central part of S75 because they force Stavast to relinquish control over the shooting process and, consequently, any expectations of the results. The portraits are shaped by circumstance—light, interaction, and, above all, the camera-phone itself.
Gone are the hallmarks of Stavast’s previous work—layered visual languages, a multiplicity of image sources, and interactions with text—yet the power of experimentation remains. No two poses are identical, no single vision emerges, but rather a chorus of diverse experiences and expressions, each responding differently to this intimate encounter in which both photographer and subject are equally involved and vulnerable.

There is also an inherent contradiction between the immediacy of digital photography and the way these images seem to elude reality. The portraits are “flawed” by missing pixels and shifting color tones, their low quality softening the harshness of reality, acting almost as a filter. In this regard, the decision to print the S75 book using rotogravure printing is a masterstroke—by saturating the thin paper with ink, the technique absorbs digital “imperfections” and creates an almost painterly, abstract effect. This process enhances the images’ grainy texture and lends them a diffused glow, situating them in a timeless dimension seemingly at odds with the rapidity of their creation. The portraits in S75 resemble those from the Dutch Golden Age of painting—once again, an unexpected revelation at the heart of Petra Stavast’s refined artistry.

We spoke of a change in approach for the Dutch artist, but perhaps it is simply a shift in perspective: rather than working with pre-existing material, she begins constructing a new, personal archive—one built from the multiplicity of individuals who, in different ways, inhabit our everyday lives. She forces an encounter through the mediation of photography because it is precisely in that in-between space, between us, that infinite possibilities can arise.

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