You got the Love

An Interview with Urs Lüthi

*Why do you almost always use yourself as a model?

Because this provides me with the most emotionally direct form of expression.

*What is the difference between yourself in real life and in your pictures?

My pictures are abstract and have in fact little to do with me myself. I treat myself as a stranger. The reason why I nevertheless constantly use myself as my model is that I have a closer relationship to myself that to anyone else. Thus the picture itself becomes more real because I try to illuminate the different aspects of my personality.

*To what extent can the word ‘illuminate’ be understood as ‘de-mask’?

This is naturally an intimate affair - rather like writing a very personal letter to someone in terms which may nevertheless be read by everyone. The borderline between the private and the public is a matter of the form of communication and not the actual content.

*It seems to me that your pictures always have an element of sadness.

The constant preoccupation with myself naturally also means a constant preoccupation with loneliness, a constant reflection between the picture and reality, reality and the picture.

*What reality?

I am fascinated by the reality which confronts me every day, and I am also aware that it can stifle me. As a product of this reality, I endeavor to put a distance between it and myself — and thus between me and myself. Sometimes I am successful, but not always. For example, I can experience a motorway restaurant in all its cheerlessness both from an almost playful distance and down to the last detail. At other times, however, it - like myself - can become unbearable.

*To what extent is your belief in what you are doing identical with what you are doing?

I am suspicious of belief without illusion. My illusions can give me distance. And it often happens that my belief coincides with my illusions. Belief alone must necessarily presuppose a criterion.