Lena Holzer

A Shadow in the Shape of a House

What insights can one gain from solitude? asked Austrian photographer Lena Holzer during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. In the series A Shadow in the Shape of a House, Holzer documented her isolation while staying in an uninhabited house opposite her childhood home, examining the estrangement from the familiar afforded by this literal shift in perspective. In a fragmented documentary style employing a mix of black and white and colour photography, the photographer ‘collected’ treasures and memories she found around the space to explore what can be revealed when exposed to the inner self. ‘The project is thus an act of looking behind two façades – the architectural one of the house I had in front of my eyes every day for many years in my childhood, and my own social façade as an individual who has undergone radical changes ever since I left the small, petit-bourgeois town I grew up in,’ Holzer explains. The poetic series showcases the extraordinary within the ordinary and questions the criteria by which value is determined.