The State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSPHOTO and the Goethe-Institut in St. Petersburg present the exhibition project “Face to Face” by photographers Amélie Losier (Berlin) and Frank Gaudlitz (Potsdam). Losier and Gaudlitz studied under Arno Fischer, one of the most famous masters of German photography. In 2019, they participated in Goethe-Institut’s residency program Dialog19.

The exhibition brings together two photo projects that originated in long and far-away journeys. Frank Gaudlitz visited South America, where he followed the steps of the outstanding scientist Alexander von Humboldt (“The Road of the Sun”), and Amélie Losier brought her works from today’s Cairo, where she explored the urban life of modern Arab women (“Sayeda”).

Amélie Losier created a series of portraits of women in Egypt between the Arab Spring and the military dictatorship. The pictures show one of the four female taxi drivers in Cairo, the first woman running for president, activists, factory workers, and housewives, with or without a hijab. Losier documents the women’s history of Egypt between the rise and stagnation.

Frank Gaudlitz traveled through Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador along the ancient Road of the Sun, laid by the Incas, on the trail of the team of geographer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt who explored the region in the early 19th century. The photographer paid particular attention to indigenous peoples, their way of life, and cultural traditions. The visual material is structured according to the stages of Humboldt’s journey and is accompanied by quotes from his diaries and letters.

The title of the exhibition “Face to Face” reflects the photographers’ pursuit of honest and open dialogue with their models, as well as with each other.

Gaudlitz writes, “I am thinking about the very process of portrait creation when the photographer and the model are facing each other as equals and can enter into a dialogue. Our portraits allow us to take a glimpse of the private lives of people, to see different segments of society, and to get to know different cultures. They testify to the togetherness emerging between strangers and us. And eventually, as photographers, we also engage in dialogue and contemplate each other.”

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Amélie Losier, born in Versailles, France, in 1976, studied documentary photography between 2001 and 2005 at the “Fotografie am Schiffbauerdamm” school in Berlin under Arno Fischer. Amélie has been a freelance photographer in Berlin and Paris since 2001 and a photographer for Die Tageszeitung since 2004. Her work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including “New York: Illustrations,” Le Dépot des Photographes Gallery, Paris, 2001; “Quand la ville dort. The night workers,” Akademie der Künste, Klostergalerie, Zehdenick (book), 2008; “Berlinale Backstage,” Schauspielhaus, Magdeburg, 2013; “Stalin Allee vs Karl-Marx Allee,” Fenster61, Berlin, 2014; “SAYEDA, Women in Egypt,” Institut Français de Jordanie, 5th Image Festival, Amman, Jordan; Festival Zurich Liest, Modissa, Zurich, Switzerland; Haus am Kleistpark Projektraum, Berlin (book), 2016–2018.

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Frank Gaudlitz, born in Vetschau in 1958, studied photography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst between 1987 and 1991. Since then, he has realized numerous photographic projects, the results of which have been shown in just as many exhibitions. Today, Gaudlitz is one of the most famous German photographers living. His latest book project “Russian Times 1988–2018” was published in 2019. Spanning over 30 years, it covers three periods Russia’s recent history and societal changes.