Portrait works, 2002-2025
Portrait works, 2002-2025
“I am fascinated with human existence – the moral choices we make, our mentality and psychology, bestiality and low levels of awareness”
Monika k. adler
PHOTOGRAPHY commisions
Portfolio, Photovogue
209 WOMEN FOR THE UK PARLIAMENT
RANKIN’S 2020 FOR SKY ARTS TV
MOnika K Adler – THE EYE OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Monika K Adler on ArtSY – WEST DEN HAAG
ON MONIKA K. ADLER’S Portrait works …
In Adler’s photographs both human beings and objects emanate a sense of abandonment or otherness, strange and liminal manifestations existing on The border between our familiar world and some mysterious and ineffable dimension not amenable to full disclosure or to rational discourse. Twilight glimpses of the troubled dreams that infuse our apprehension of this
world if not a phantasm of another realm that at moments of extremity or disruption impinges on this one.
From The Ambivalent Body: On The Short Films Of Monika K. Adler by American critic and novelist Robert Smart, © 2013
GAZING AT THIS ARTIST’S PHOTOGRAPHY, FROM A PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE, WILHELM REICH COMES TO MIND. AND, NOTABLY, HIS VIEW OF SEXUAL POLITICS.
HIS CONTENTIONS ABOUT THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE SUPPRESSION OF SEXUALITY IN, FOR EXAMPLE, PATRIARCHAL BASED MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE ARE BROUGHT TO THE FORE BY THIS FINE ART WORK, ALBEIT PARADOXICAL AND SEEMINGLY TANGENTIAL. HE STRESSED THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN HAVING CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN BODIES AND INDEPENDENCE, IN ECONOMIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES (PERHAPS WORTH NOTING
HERE THE POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A POLITICO-SOCIAL STANCE EVEN RELATED TO FREUD’S OEDIPAL MYTH OR, INDEED, HIS THEORETICAL ELECTRA MYTH). FOR REICH – A MALE ANALYST, FEMALE SEXUAL RECEPTIVITY CAME POSSIBLY TO REPRESENT A MEETING OF THE SELF AND THE WORLD IN WHAT HE REFERRED TO AS A ‘UNIVERSAL LOVE’ I.E. IN WOMEN SEXUALITY IS EVOLUTIONARY – SUCH THAT MANKIND WOULD AT LAST RE-JOIN THE ‘NATURAL’ UNIVERSE. THIS IS ALSO PERHAPS ALLIED TO MALINOWSKI’S PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.
