Hans-Peter Feldmann | All the Clothes of a Woman

Hans-Peter Feldmann
All the Clothes of a Woman
Dusseldorf, Germany / Toronto, Canada : Feldmann Verlag / Art Metropole, 1999
[44] pp., 19 x 11 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

"The photographs in this book, taken in 1974, show one woman's entire wardrobe."

A special edition of 30 copies included an additional image tipped into the title page.




Mikkel Carl: I guess Alle Kleider eine Frau wasn’t all her clothes, so I would much like to know how your logic of selection works, here and in general?

Hans-Peter Feldmann: It actually was all her clothes. Forty years ago it was a different story, people didn’t have all that much. She actually had step into another room and change, while I was doing the photography.

MC: All right, I’ll put it in another way: “Could it have been any woman?”

HPF: No, the work was about this woman. If I had come on to her in the streets, or somewhere else, she would probably have slapped me in the face, whereas with this approach it was all a bit more sophisticated. I got really close to her; do you know what I mean? Alle Kleider eine Frau was all about the woman, not the clothes. Anyway, I take things, I arrange them in a certain way, and that’s it. For instance, I go and put two spoons in a soup plate. You can call it what you want, but I call it “two spoons in a soup plate”. There’s no need for any other name, since we’re all quite familiar with the concept of one spoon. Making art is like eating a tomato, either you fancy its taste, or you don’t.