Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek Alt: Man Woman Unfinished

Untitled, 2001-2007 (from “Man Woman Unfinished”) © Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek Alt I recently came across this web-based photo project by Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek Alt called Man Woman Unfinished. It loads random pairs of photographs, creating a “theoretically unrepeatable row of encounters between the man and the woman.” The project was selected as a Winter 2007 “Honorable Mention” by Aperture:

The history of photography is dotted with extended portraits that men make of their wives and lovers: Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe, Harry Callahan and Eleanor, Emmet Gowin and Edith. It is not so common to find a joint portrait of a couple, created collaboratively by both man and woman. Hynek Alt and Aleksandra Vajd spontaneously began the project Man Woman Unfinished when they discovered they were to have a child. In their description of the origins of the project, they explain that the images were initially created out of basic curiosity and a spirit of playfulness, although it has clearly developed into something more intense and ongoing. With this (doubled) body of work, the viewer finds him or herself in a curious and unusual position, caught between the gaze of the photographer (who is also the subject) and the subject (who is also the photographer). This creates an even greater hermetic seal between the viewer, the creator, and the person photographed than ordinarily, locking the gazes into a three-way stand-off, not only to contemplate the nature of the relationships, but somehow to be implicated in it as well. The match of image to image in each diptych is guided by gesture, emotional tone, as much as by palette. The images are compelling, crisply colored, frequently unsettling. The artists portray the current incarnation of the work as an “intimate confession carried out in a series of portraits… a mutual examination of the person with whom one has decided to live, to bear responsibilities, to share everything.”