A model taking pictures of herself? That may sound like a project born of narcissism, but in the case of model-photographer Christina Kruse, something like the opposite was in effect. Back when she began shooting self-portrait Polaroids in 1996, Cruse explains her motives were more practical. “I was trying to teach myself how to take pictures,” she said. “And I was traveling a lot at the time, so it seemed like I was the most convenient subject.” Eventually, it struck Kruse that she was compiling a kind of visual travel journal, and she began to collect her images and play on them for a series of books that also comprise her collages and drawings.
This evening, she opens her first show of these works at the Steven Kasher Gallery in west Chelsea, an event that also marks the launch of Kruse’s Reisebuch 1-5. “Reisebuch means travel book in German,” she says. “I’ve selected images from the five books I made over the years and put them together in one, more formal book.” Though she had offers from two publishing houses, Kruse has elected to publish the books herself—fitting, given that she’s kept her art and photography a relatively private project.
“I really only picked up the camera because I was at the point in my modeling career where I was starting to think, this will end soon, so what next?” she recalls. “I didn’t show anything to anyone for a long time. But I think that’s good. Doing things by myself meant that I didn’t just teach myself to take pictures, but that I also got to teach myself how to see.”
—Maya Singer
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