All The Things You Are

The publication All The Things You Are brings together photographs that the artist Livio Baumgartner took in his father’s apartment over the course of four years. He secretly documented the conspicuous shifts in the inventory, which reminded him of contemporary art installations. Houseplants, yoga mats, boxes, baskets, candles, watering cans, clothes and countless everyday objects became the protagonists of Baumgartner’s nightly photographic tours. Instead of being annoyed by the chaos of the piles, he documented it. And thus his father’s attempt to create order, to give things a suitable place, to arrange them aesthetically. In the photographic view, the arrangements become sculptures.

The photographs point beyond their original intimacy, to a time in which most of us own far more than we need and tidying coaches write world bestsellers for a reason. Baumgartner’s photographs tell of how we deal with “all the things we are”, which we acquire in the hope that they will be useful to us, decorate us or give us new beginnings. Simone Lappert’s poems take a literary approach to these searches and add another layer to the photographs. Sometimes thoughtful, sometimes tongue-in-cheek. Like the pictures themselves.