gemeinsam anders

2023

GEMEINSAM ANDERS SEIN, Photo Project with Girls from Wilde Hütte/ Mondiale, Berlin, DE, 2023
As part of the Call for Solidarity program by Berlin Mondiale, I led a participatory photo project for girls
in Gropiusstadt, Berlin. Under the theme “Gemeinsam Anders Sein” — Being Different Together — the girls designed costumes, painted masks, and took instant analog portraits of one another, exploring self-expression through imaginative play. The process combined collage, drawing, painting, and glitter — a space for experimentation, self-confidence, and attunement to oneself: the simple but radical idea that being different is not just acceptable, but worth celebrating together. The project concluded with a public exhibition and a Leporello publication — the girls co-curated the final show, displaying their works alongside enlarged polaroids; for some, the connections built during the project lasted beyond it, including mentoring relationships that continued afterward.

KUNST UND KOOPERATION IN DER GROPIUSSTADT, Group Exhibition, Bauhaus-Archiv,
Gemeinschaftshaus Gropiusstadt, Berlin, DE, 2025
“Kunst und Kooperation in der Gropiusstadt” at the Gemeinschaftshaus Gropiusstadt was a group exhibition and conference that brought together artists, cultural workers, and district administrators — an act of advocacy. In the context of funding cuts, the event made visible what community art practice actually involves: the labor, complexity, and stakes behind work that is too often dismissed as a hobby. Each participant presented an object from a project they led in the district, turning the room into a shared argument for the necessity of this work. I contributed analog Instax photographs from my participatory project with girls at Wilde Hütte.

Alltagsfantasie

2023/26

Spanning 2010–2023 (photo-artbook) and evolving into an immersive installation in 2025, Alltagsfantasie is Joanna Szproch's layered self-portrait across time — a complex universe built through photographic performances, images with her muse, and her daughter's drawings, challenging Catholic norms and patriarchal conditioning. Situated between Slavic romanticism and Prussian rigidity, Szproch carved out a liminal space of fantasy — a shared refuge where she explores female wonder, joy, and sovereignty. Photography becomes both ritual and relationality: with herself through introspection, with her muse through sisterhood, and with her daughter through intergenerational dialogue. This network of images, objects, and bodies — carriers of memory and affect — creates meaning through juxtaposition.

Szproch, raised under conservative Polish norms, moved to Berlin, the multicultural art mecca, with her daughter Lena, seeking a better life and freedom from suffocating Catholic expectations. The migration was challenging, but it allowed them to craft a universe of joy, beauty, and wonder within the liminal space of fantasy. These elements are essential for human well- being but are often denied to women, who are expected to nurture others at their own expense. Healing begins from within, and self-awareness is a radical act. Fantasy serves as a playful form of resistance against oppressive systems — daily acts of curiosity and play become gestures of defiance.

“Everything (Polish) women do is subject to constant public scrutiny. We are denied the right to pleasure and joy. This I intuitively refuse, but also I repel a female martyrdom that weakens me.”

In 2012, JOANNA SZPROCH left Poland. In Berlin, she wanted to escape the misogynist, conservative corset of her strictly Catholic homeland, to be free. Almost 10 years after #MeToo, anti-feminist forces still deny women's humanity while the extreme Christian right rises toward fascism. Alltagsfantasie insists on the recognition of women’s inner life as a fundamental dimension of human existence. What remains invisible within social structures—female introspection, curiosity, or desire—should be examined first and foremost from the inside. Womanhood can only be understood from within its core, and the experience is a form of knowledge, not a withdrawal into the private.

Although rooted in personal experience, it addresses universal human rights to self-determination, joy, and self-realization. Values such as altruism, care, and devotion are human, not feminine; the same goes for the need for joy, wonder, sovereignty, and interpersonal resonance, which belong to personhood, not to gender. Szproch shows that well-being is essential for responsibility and care. Restoring women’s inner autonomy is a cultural necessity that links inner freedom and collective health. Szproch fights the dysfunctional system of patriarchy – a fight that still has to be fought in society and in everyday life in order to bring about change.

“Some people say I have my head in the clouds. For me, it’s all true. Live your fantasy and do not let illusions trick you.

Buy the book: https://www.andrefrereditions.com/en/books/photography/alltags-fantasie/

"I penetrate with curiosity
my infinite Alltagsfantasie
that resonates with my true self.
This allows me to live authentically
despite illusionary appearances.
I envision my melody with no supremacy.
I gather from others what reverberates
with my inner frequencies.
These are the chords to my voice
and the palette to my vision.
Dead full, Unisono.
Desireless, No Stress.
Null, Half full, Middle Point.
Whisper, Touch, Synchronicity.
At pace, In space, Full In Unity.
Life is a miraculous mystery."

Lena

coming soon

I have been photographing my daughter since she was born and our remarkable relationship. I observe her transformation into a woman and her search for her own identity, separating herself from me as an independent individual with her own agency. We play at taking pictures and she, more than once witnessing my photo shoots, plays the role of a model and impersonates characters she creates herself. In the process, we balance on the verge of making testimony and creation.

Jason Honea

coming soon

Jason Honea hails from Northern California's Santa Clara Valley and calls Berlin, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Cruz home. He's a rocker, performer, singer, sayer, painter, drawer, and prayer. In an attempt to find out what works about music he straddles history and the lives of the saints to invoke atmosphere, redemption, and quest in an ever evolving exercise in fun and beauty.

I photograph Jason as my friend and a Californian punk-rocker. We shared a flat and now we are best buddies.

Bodywholeness

2019

The title BODYWHOLENESS was created by combining the words body and whole, in a synthetic way it refers to the issues of the project. It is an attempt to think of man as a holistic being, in which carnality is inseparably intertwined with the soul and mind. Such an attitude is important, especially today, when busy with everyday life, overwhelmed by media messages, bombarded by visual stimuli, we forget about the body, we think only about its external surface – its appearance. We cease to be in the body, to be the body, to be the BODYWHOLENESS. Is it possible to take at least a small step to be closer to the body, as it used to be?

bibgul

2016-2018

The photo project portraying Bibgul who calls herself an Experimental Amateur Exhibitionist/ Filmmaker/ Famous Dancer / Percussionist /Sexy
Hat / Fashion Designer. Her child-like yet provocative charisma inspired both artists to have together several shootings over a period of 2 years. To disobey the fashion industry’s snobiety and fakeness, they developed a rough and controversial DIY working style and Szproch with a sense of irony decided to finish a project in the form of a glamorous magazine mock-up in an edition of 10 copies.

Berlin Wunderland

2017

Berlin, the mecca of art, happens to become my home, where I meet colorful creative personalities. They have liberated themselves from the traditional canon and indulge in the experimentation of creation with childlike enthusiasm. In the spirit of the photography series resulting from our encounters, I am developing its continuation for publication at the special request of the Art Issue of 4SEE Magazine.

house of doll

2017

SOPHIE SONI is a multidisciplinary artist and founder of HOUSE OF DOLL. Her mixed media collages range from wearable art pieces to site-specific junk installations and sculptures. Scouring abandoned spaces and exploring the obsessive nature of material object attachment and collection, all resources used in her work are reclaimed rubbish without exception.

An editorial and a live shooting performance collaboration with House of Doll at Neurotitan, January 2017, Berlin, DE
The intermedial action between a performer Bibgul and a photographer Joanna Szproch is the result of a meeting between the medium of instant photography with the art of performance. Photographer captures the performer’s exhibitionism balancing somewhere between girly-infantile and slutty-vulgar.
Performance is a part of Rubbish Fairy’s installation House of Doll.

hanne lippard

2016

Hanne Lippard, born in 1984 in Milton Keynes, GB, lives and works in Berlin. Lippard’s practice explores the voice as a medium. Her education in graphic design informs how language can be visually powerful; her texts are visual, rhythmic, and performative rather than purely informative, and her work is conveyed through a variety of disciplines, which include short films, sound pieces, installations, and performance.

liina nillson

2016

Liina Nilsson is a Swedish artist based in Berlin and travels a lot, working in the mediums of painting, video, and writing. She is also an illustrator, editor, and director in the same mediums, an organizer, multiple designer, sometime singer, oft a builder, always a worker. She also runs a video art label called "Shocking Film", is one part of a duo "Nemesis" and a collective Pizza Suicide.

ballady i romanse for the lure film

2016

Ballady i Romanse is the band of two sisters Zuzanna and Barbara Wrońska who wrote the music and lyrics to the movie The Lure (Polish: Córki dancingu – "Daughters of Dancing"). This is a 2015 Polish horror musical film directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska. The story is a reworking of the 1837 fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen, with inspiration from sisters' experiences. After a Polish premiere, the film screened at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and Fantasia Film Festival, to mixed reviews.

whitelies magazine

2016

An editorial for Whitelies Magazine - A collaboration with a makeup artist Jana Kalgajeva

lady gaby

2014

LADY GABY is a Berlin-based Australian spoken word and performance artist, creative writing, and projects coordinator as well as an event promoter, who has been involved in the international spoken word scene since the 90s. the organiser of Fuel, From the MOUTH OF DAMES, The Poetic Groove, lady gaby devotes energy in bringing poetry into the spotlight to make it 'COOL AND GROOVEY' to be performed at dance clubs, performance venues, and cultural festivals. She loves poets whose work is provocative, on the edge, and relevant to everyone around.

phil and monica

2014

Blending elements of lounge, surf, Latin, jazz, and wine music, Phil and Monica, featuring Leo 'Tormented Chilli Burger’, Mario ‘Crippled Pinhata’, ‘Fat Robocop’ and Matthew 'Steven Seagull', combines face-melting ukelele kitchen rock chopped and sauteed with heart-wrenching horns and mozzarella melting over thoughtful lyrics. A sonic adventure to a faraway South Pacific island.

prima facie

tarren johnson

2014

Tarren Johnson (b. 1990) is an American choreographer and artist based in Berlin.
She works with performance, video, sculpture, and writing.

artistic characters

2008-2014

a compilation of portraits of creative personalities based in Warsaw, NY, and Berlin, some of them I photographed for ID Poland in 2014 which featured Polish creatives living and working in Berlin

sound portraits

2011-2019

Portraits of musicians