conference rooms

photograph series, 2001 

The First Image:
A quiet room, clean and empty, ready to welcome visitors.
The room is untouched, without time and silent. Light flows in through the windows, from another world. Outside there is noise, movement, in here is nothing.
These rooms open up possibilities, for confidential talk, new contacts.
They are sheltered. No Entry for the public.

The Second Image:
Something has happened.
A conference, a meeting, a talk, paper was rustling, coffee cups were clicking being replaced on their saucers.
The room talks, the subject of the talk still lingers in the air. People were here, doing business, were agreeing, or not.
Nobody will ever know who was here, what has happened.
Maybe someone was in the room, who did not leave any traces at all, the scene of action does not give any clues.
Except for the leftovers from smoking and drinking.
Soon the cleaners will have cleared this evidence and the room will be virginal like before, as if nobody has ever been here.

The Images In-between, Invisible:
The small changes on these images stand for the big changes of the outside.
After a couple of decades where money trading in Liechtenstein was booming, the place itself has changed.
While the rooms themselves remain almost untouched, they changed the whole country
dramatically.

The population of Liechtenstein is 30.000, but there are another 30.000 “invisible people”-
Foundations.
They pay taxes, take influence on politics, their taxes pay for new roads and tennis courts, with their money people become millionaires, but they themselves remain invisible.
The images show the reality: Nobody does anything that one could see, except for drinking coffee and mineral water.
I feel like an aggressor, a peeping Tom, then again like a police inspector searching for evidence on the scene of the action.