Charlotte Lybeer

Charlotte Lybeer uses photography to study the capsular aspects of our society. This is clearly visible in the closed, controlled architectural ensembles such as: gated communities, shopping malls, theme parks and airports. These are generic, a-geographical and capsular places, that are a sign of simulation and where obsessions about safety rule. Charlotte Lybeer takes her inspiration from the architectural aspects thereof and from human behaviour in these settings.

In a gated community the ‘ecology of fantasy’ (disneyfication) and the ‘ecology of fear and violence’ (bronxification) coincide. We could call this an amusement machine as well as a restraining machine.
In her projects Lybeer takes an aesthetic as well as social look at people who form groups together and/or separate themselves from others. Because she brings the activity in the communities to a halt for a while and has the person being photographed take time to look into the camera (just long enough to be photographed with her medium-format camera) Charlotte Lybeer’s photography resembles that of nineteenth century documentary photography and she rescues it from the feel of normal photo-journalism.