Vivir la Muerte - Begegnung mit der Tod

Bastienne Schmidt's photographs are images of both life and death. Mercilessly direct, these pictures from Latin America - the fruits of intensive work over the past few years - bring to an existential fact of our lives, a truth we in western societies are only too happy to hide behind a facade of casual diversions and consumable "beauty"; the immediate presence of death. It takes courage to look at these pictures, for in the faces of these people from another culture we are confronted, violently and with an authenticity we cannot ignore, with the very destiny we refuse to accept. Moreover, Bastienne Schmidt shows us the naked truth that underlies not only our inability to look our own death in the face, but also our tendency to disregard the violent deaths of others, failing to recognize the value of "mere" life as we do, so long as they die far enough away from our own doorsteps.