The gravity of the situation dawned on him on his first visit to the supermarket. The supermarket shelves, emptied by hoarders, made him realize that for decades he had assumed that everything would always be there. Nothing could be further from the truth. Vacantly he walked around, waiting for the utter unknown, afraid of an enemy that we cannot see. Stepping into his studio the next morning, Olaf was scared and completely paralyzed, having no idea where the pandemic would take us.

Palm Springs

In Palm Springs (2018), Olaf focuses on the downfall of the first world and discusses many other topical issues. One of the key themes is climate change, though at the same time the images also recall the United States of the 1960s. In a beautiful series of portraits, landscapes – this was the first time Olaf had photographed landscapes – still lifes and filmic scenes he refers to issues like teenage pregnancy, discrimination, religious abuses and polarization. The series tells the story of people withdrawing into gated communities as reality invades their paradise.

And those two boys in that villa from the fifties one in swimming trunks and the other in army clothing from the time of the Korean war, could never have changed places, Olaf noticed while photographing. “When I made the sketches, I thought: I’ll see who wears what later. But at the time a colored boy would probably not be credible as a resident of that spacious villa complex. The son living in the house was undoubtedly white and the dark boy was about to die in Korea in the fight against the communist threat. Fictional gossip’ everyone has to have an opinion.”

Hope & Grief

Erwin Olaf’s series Hope (2005) explores the relationship between dream and reality. The protagonists are caught in a second of introspection, drowning silently in the depth of their thoughts. The era of the American dream promised them ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, but the latter was never fully captured.

Human fragility is a theme prevalent in much of Olaf’s work; the artist says, “It’s nice to lock people in a very formal world in which everything is nearly perfect – and then to break something. Then you have your drama.” This ruptured perfection suffuses the Hope series and also permeates his project Grief (2007)

In Grief, solitary figures brood in tearful silence. Loosely based on the style of American aristocracy in the early 1960s, and more precisely, on the torment of Jacqueline Kennedy immediately after the assassination of her husband, these images blend historical detail with staged emotions.