Photographers AnaHell and Nathalie Dreier are their own protagonists in Red Rubber Road, an ongoing self-portrait project that documents their relationship throughout the years. Having established an intimate relationship from the age of twelve, they succeeded in consistently coming together over the years to document their corporeal changes and evolving desires, despite at times living oceans apart. In 2011, they began to integrate various expressions of role play into their photos which inspired a shift in identities and formed the foundation of Red Rubber Road. These images portray both photographers in a powerful embrace of the unusual and the carnal, mixing into each other and their surroundings while never entirely revealing their identities. These surreal compositions present femininity, sexuality, the passage of time and the boundaries of the self.

This spring, shortly before their next scheduled rendezvous in rural Spain, the COVID-19 pandemic erupted and their shooting was cancelled. While they had already been accustomed to editing and post-production over distance, before COVID-19 shooting their portraits remotely was unimaginable. Uncertain of how long their respective country’s quarantines would last, they turned to electronic devices to forge a new way to collaborate. After some trials (and errors) which involved taking self-portraits separately in advance and coordinating the shootings through real-time video calls, a formidable dynamic transpired. In Together A Part, the artists succeed in merging with one other solely through a screen, thus transforming its narrative: The screen is no longer merely a window to the virtual world, but a concrete object that metabolizes through the display, connecting us, extending us and morphing us in an almost physical way.

Together A Part: Extending the physical through virtual interaction

In 2018, AnaHell spent almost a month in an isolation ward at the military hospital in Berlin due to an infectious disease. Being confined to the isolation ward and to the discomfort and harrowing limitations of her weakened body had already altered her reality from one day to the next. Visitors were only allowed to enter her room in full protective gear. Curiously observing this new environment through her delirious state, the obscured faces and hopeful eyes of the doctors and nurses, the bright blue nitrile gloves and buttery yellow protective garments started to feel not only unreal, but also quite surreal. How could this reality be further deconstructed? On Nathalie Dreier's visits, the duo took performative self-portraits within the constraints of the hospital room that documented an alternative narrative within their given reality. These images tell a story in which the pain of AnaHell’s experience has been exchanged for a fetishized and intimate reality. With this series, the artists explore how a new reality can be constructed within a given one and how performance can create new memories that alter the stories of our lives.

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