Lisa McCarty / Monika Radhoff-Troll

transatlantic I/II

“Looking East – Looking West”. This title has been the starting point for a photographical exchange between the artists Monika Radhoff-Troll, Aachen, Germany and Lisa McCarty, Arlington, U.S.A. in May 2011. In January 2012 the border crossing cooperation was modified into a real photographical dialog. We agreed to send a square photo without any further written information, to which the recipient herself would have to answer. This created a pure visual dialog which asks the artist to be responsive to the other artist’s picture language. This kind of work implies more than an exchange crossing the borders per email. The artist “analyses” the received photography to decipher (decode) picture language and the elements of the photo to be able to answer the message with regards to content and/or with pictorial means. The selected photos are thus combined to create one common artwork as the finished piece.