In search of the feminine essence
Kölner Stadtanzeiger, October 5th 2007

By Jürgen Kisters

In the exhibition room Lichthof Georg Raab presents 99 photographs of 99 women wearing the same dress.

Sülz – Never before has any artist decorated the vast exhibition room of the Lichthof in Lothar street as stringently and intelligibly with pictures as Georg Raab did.
This seems very surprising, as he presented the enormous number of 99 photographs and just as many corresponding text plaques. They all show a woman in a meadow wearing a summer dress. It is always a different woman whereas the dress is always the same one. This delicate nuance between repetition and variation is sufficient to “speed up ones thinking”.
Raab (born in 1968) has accomplished a perfect project, which combines portrait photography, conceptual art and sociological – psychological field research. The question is being sounded whether you are what you wear or if people give the last touch to clothing.
How do different women look in this dress? Do they all feel equally comfortable wearing it? And is it actually the same dress that fits 99 women who have very different physiques?
On a short woman the dress reaches down to the ground, on a tall one the naked calves are displayed. On a thin woman the dress falls very fluttery, whereas it stretches on a buxom one.
What do these pictures of women show us about their bodies and their appearance? And how do these women feel in this very feminine garment and in the situation of being photographed? This all is covered in the second dimension of the exhibition. The artist asked the women a number of questions. The answers are displayed on the text plaques placed under the photographs. They describe how the women felt while wearing the dress, what they thought and how they felt about clothing and fashion in general. One who takes time to read can learn about 99 opinions of women, about the topics textile- and body experience, feminine self-conception, the fashion world dictate and change of dress code.
It is amazing how much of the personality of every woman, every single one of them with closed eyes, is expressed only by the posture.
“Every one of them is unique and one inevitably starts to compare”, says Raab about his concept.
And the conclusion of Eva-Maria W., one of the photographed women, is: it is not important that it is always the same dress being worn but the person wearing it is essential.