‘The City is a Choreography’ explores the contemporary city. The project exists of street scenes and portraits in public spaces that probes the disconnection between the city and the youth that reside within. With special attention to the sculptural qualities of the body and the relationship between space and individual, and between each other, the city always hums in the background of the images. ‘The City is a Choreography’ explores the escape from the daily routine of everyday life and how the urban environment can be perceived with both eyes and body.
In the age of disconnection, I want to focus on how we can connect with one another and how we can connect with our daily environment. I wonder: How do young individuals experience the city? What does it mean to inhabit a space? Is every action we take in a public street a performance? A quote that greatly inspired me by Andrew Hewitt: ”The freedom of bodies to move through space is the very basis of political freedom” (edited)
Biography:
Dutch photographer Melissa Schriek studied documentary photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Netherlands and graduated in 2018. Since then she has been working on several projects exploring the relationships between individuals and between them and their personal environment. She is especially interested in the physical and emotional (dis)connection and uses the body and landscape as a sculptural tool to explore this. Her work is often created with a performative approach, aesthetically and conceptually exploring the border between staged and documentary photography. Ultimately she would like her work to raise questions and about how we relate to one another and our personal environment.
‘The City is a choreography’ is made between 2017-2019 in different cities around the world.
All images ©Melissa Schriek