The white dress

Artist statement 

Since my childhood, I have this fascination for wedding dresses and bridal and communion photographs. The beauty of these white, pure dresses, worn only for this one special day, fascinates me. My fascination has gone so far that as a child I asked my grandmother to sew me a wedding dress so that I could take photographs like these of myself. Since my parents are not religious, I did not receive the communion or something similar.
As this fascination remained, I began to collect old wedding and communion photos I found on flea markets or junk stores. These photographs were once even more precious than they are today, as for some women in the past the communion or wedding photography is the only photograph that exists of them.
However the older I got, the greater became the discrepancy between this fascination and my actual view on the world. As a feminist, these images, the dresses and poses could also be seen as symbols for the oppression, the control over women. How is it possible that I still feel so mesmerised by them? How could a redefinition of these images look like? My Grandmother is a 92-year-old woman, she grew up in a time where communion and wedding photographs were black and white and people were rarely photographed. I began a conversation with her about her white bridal dress. On the one hand, for research for an art project on this topic, and on the other hand, as a way to build a connection to her, her history and her experience of being a woman of her time. One amongst all the women on the images I collected. With her help, I am searching for a way to break the monumentality of these communion and wedding photographs in order to awaken the spectrum of stories and feelings behind them.