Double Portraits — a collection of works

Over the years a few photographic double portraits have transpired as part of Ury’s oeuvre. These have been assembled in diverse manner – the extensive Photo and Text series Hermes Insensed, points to a close interweaving of her personal and artistic life: she asked friends and colleagues to greet one another with a “hand kiss”, to court and to reconcile themselves with one another; then she photographed them. Franco and Elke J. was a digital collage, a double-profile-portrait combining the image of a Spanish 25 peseta coin from 1957 and a cutting from a German magazine in 1994. lesser is me more or less features the artist Tanya Ury to the right of the picture, sitting in three-quarter view — digitally incorporated into the photograph and facing her to the left, is the German Impressionist Lesser Ury, Tanya Ury’s great-grand uncle, in a reproduction of his ‘Selbstportät mit Dunklem Hut’ (Self-portrait with dark hat). With Your Rules, the photographic image of the artist’s hand stretched out, the word ‘Boss’ hand-sewn into her palm, is combined with a a poster advertising Hugo men’s cologne ‘your fragrance’, on which a young man displays his hand inscribed with the handwritten logo ‘your rules’. Similar to lesser is me more or less, or else features the artist Tanya Ury to the left of the picture, sitting in three-quarter view, where digitally incorporated into the photograph and facing her to the right is the German-Jewish author Else Sara Ury (1877−1943). With Du bist Einstein the artist Tanya Ury is featured with a pipe; she faces the viewer but gazes to the right, where digitally incorporated into the photograph, is a portrayal of Albert Einstein, with pipe; he is not a double, as in Ury’s artwork doo bee doo, however. In both double portraits doo bee doo and Du bist Einstein, Ury dresses and poses similarly to Einstein – she mimics his facial expression. With Artistic freedom, the 9 photographs taken on the premises of a former Stasi prison in Berlin, are also digitally collaged self-portraits, in which Tanya Ury appears twice herself however, once as perpetrator and again naked, as victim.

Double Portraits — a collection of works: