Sarah Cooper & Nina Gorfer

© Cooper & Gorfer

In their work the Austro-American pair of artists, Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer, focuses on the female aspects of cultural identity. Cooper & Gorfer revive the tradition of portrait painting by deconstructing the (hi)story of the portrayed. Their photo-based photo collages start from anthropological-type research in an attempt to condense the personal and collective stories of their protagonists in one image. Like in art-historical mannerism and surrealism, they articulate the subconscious aspects of a person and in their photos dissect our ideas of identity and how our cultural heritage informs our actions and our perception of the world. Cooper & Gorfer started to collaborate in 2006. They live and work in Gothenburg, Sweden. They were awarded the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2018 and are Hasselblad Ambassadors.