Would I ever imagined that this 2 Years project would have brought me back to my first photo school in Paris …non in a million years … it all started in 2017 when my husband Horst Hamann who had just exhibited at the Orangerie in Schwetzingen a truly beautiful black and white exhibition in the Schlosspark, invited me to be on stage at a Talk Show in Palais Hirsch to talk about his passion for photography through his time spent in this fabulous garden. Barbara Gilsdorf who curated Horst’s exhibition and book, spontaneously asked me if I would be interested to create an exhibition for their 350 Years Jubilium of the Asparagus in Germany.
That’s where my photographic journey started!
The Schwetzingen Asparagus community welcomed me with their open arms so that I was able to create a body of work that has been exhibited more than 4 times : Palais Hirsch Schwetzingen, Pflegschloss Museum in Schrobenhausen, The Camp in Aix en Provence and Speos (my photo school in Paris)
After spending a whole harvesting season with the asparagus harvesters, I could relate to this skilled hand labor. It took me few weeks to find my conceptual ideas as I needed to spend time with the workers and the royal vegetable that was going to be celebrated.
It was always obvious to me that I would portrait the harvesters with their tools, at work in their fields, and indeed their hands as Madame Asparagus needed to be gently extracted from the sandy soil by hand!
A true Labor of Love!
After photographing all the elements I needed to compose my photo collages I felt as something was missing, some key element… I decided to spend more time in the field and get closer to the labourer. While taking more reportage pictures and following two young Polish brothers I witnessed a delightful moment : both were giggling and racing through the sandy rows, gathering a large amount of asparagus in their wooden baskets, there I needed my hands to express myself as we had no common language to understand each other. After few comical gestures I understood what was their driving force : each time they were spotting a crack on the dry sandy soil they knew their “prey” would be ripe and ready to be harvested. Like a race between them all, their days would become lighter as they would have goal!
and my goal now was to incorporate that particular element : this magical sand!
Obsessed by this idea, I woke up one night and decided to tear my baryta prints vertically and manually recreate this symbolic crack so I could place the original sand in the middle of my photograph.
This emotional process lead me to a final result that gave me a feeling of respect to the many labourers that actually participate in an agriculture tradition that is still intact.