projects
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Deli Flowers After Dark
"Deli Flowers After Dark" was created on late-night walks in Manhattan, photographing flowers, plants, and workers during the night shift in run-down New York City delis (small grocery stores usually open 24/7). Delis are disappearing fast because of gentrification and unaffordable rents, but also because of changing eating- and shopping habits. Several of these delis closed their doors forever just a few months after the project was completed.ahitzenberger_sterkl_2016jan11-15_388-2-2.jpg)
Fleischerei
Fleischerei — German for ‘butcher shop’ — sends you on a walk through the rooms of a former butcher in Vienna’s Ottakring neighborhood (formerly a working-class district, but now more a neighborhood of immigrants from around the world). The photographs show intimate visual details of objects left behind in the vacated retail store, the “Wurschtzimmer” (the room where sausages were made), and the apartment of the owners. This old family business was replaced by modern ways of shopping and cultural transformations.ahitzenberger_limes_fairways_083b.jpg)
Extra Large
“Extra Large” is a playful look at images of food found in advertising in public spaces. These images are currently on view at Artport Galerie, at the airport in Salzburg, Austria.
Still Life
“Still Life” is an ongoing series showing carelessly discarded food, left behind on streets and sidewalks — garbage representing things pushed aside and forgotten. These tossed away items tell stories about people, our society, culture and tradition. None of the objects have been arranged.
Chinese Fast Food
This series, shot in a temporary food court set up inside Beijing’s Olympic Park, reveals a visually and viscerally overloaded fast-food culture that may make some mouths water and other bellies ache. Hitzenberger concentrates on the saturated visual displays of the food stalls and the way the environment contrasts with the boredom of the workers, offering an insight into some of the contradictions in contemporary Chinese culture.
98/330 lb (44/150 kg)
This series compares the different physical presence of a very heavy man imitating the poses of a super-thin fashion model.
Inner Circle
On the outskirts of Beijing lies a two-mile (3 km) area bounded by a completely circular railroad track. Inside this circle exists a variety of different worlds, rich in contrast and jumbled together. As part of my ongoing projects based on confined spaces, I was fascinated by this microcosm and spent two months researching this area with my camera, creating structural images of the many seemingly arbitrary and unplanned elements found inside the circle: a small village, a recycling plant, corn fields, China’s national film museum, flocks of grazing sheep, artist studios, abandoned building developments and luxury homes for the elderly.
Elevated Acre
The series "Elevated Acre" was developed in New York City in collaboration with Mihoko Suzuki (pictured), as part of the ongoing project "The Body and Space." It was exhibited at the Huantie Times International Gallery, Beijing, China, in October 2011.
Pink
People dressed in pink merge with their visually exaggerated, sugar-sweet treats in an old-school New York diner.
The Paris Film
This new short film is a visual short story inspired by the work of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, starring Jimena Paz and directed by Edward Ratliff and Anja Hitzenberger.
Changing Room
An exploration of the relationship of the human body to architectural spaces. Each week, Anja photographed performers of different body shapes and movement backgrounds. Each week also brought a new installation by architect/designer Illya Azaroff, as well as live performances in the space, an abandoned photo lab in Lower Manhattan.
Bild
“Bild” (or “Picture”) is an exploration of how landscapes and urban spaces can be seen and experienced differently by a performer, a photographer and pedestrians. It was also an examination of how, through the photographer’s eye, the presence of a human body can affect the way we perceive these different environments. This project was developed in collaboration with choreographer Lisa Hinterreithner, who is shown in these images in Warsaw (Poland) and Abtenau (Austria). These photographs were first shown in October 2008 at Galerie Fotohof in Salzburg, Austria as part of the tanz_house festival.