GAME of CHAIRS - Splendors and Miseries of Federal Party Conventions.
Before major elections, political actors reaffirm their positions at national party conferences. More than anything else, these events are about producing images that will be broadcast on the evening news.
Accordingly, enormous effort goes into staging them: sets are constructed, tons of cables are laid, and sound and lighting are controlled down to the smallest detail. Every image has to be just right. The parties and their prominent representatives want, and need, to look good.
They hadn’t counted on Nikita Teryoshin. Who is going to tell him, the photographer, which images are supposed to be produced here?
Over a period of ten years, Teryoshin attends the major events of all the democratic parties represented in the German Bundestag. He initially works on his own initiative, and later also on assignment for Der Spiegel.
His photographs document the end of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, the struggle over her succession, and the reshuffling of political figures within the shifting opposition and governing coalitions up to the present day.
But the photographer’s real subject is the media staging of politics. Where these carefully constructed performances attempt to conceal the fact that political action is merely being simulated, they reveal a powerful potential for comedy.
Because these staged performances can also be disrupted, and when they are, they become visible.
Mathias Königschulte
taz Picture Desk