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.

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.

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.

Music CD Covers

Photos for a variety of CD covers, mainly for Jazz records.

Graffiti Portraits

Choreographer David Zambrano invited me to create portraits in San José, Costa Rica, of his 50 workshop participants from 36 countries. I asked each dancer to spontaneously pick the graffiti they related to most — it was fascinating to see what they selected.

Pink

People dressed in pink merge with their visually exaggerated, sugar-sweet treats in an old-school New York diner.

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.

“Normalzeit” Book Project

I was commissioned to create portraits of 11 Austrian artists, as well as document them in their creative process, for the recently published book Normalzeit. The artists each created a new work out of an old Viennese landmark: the huge, four-faced, cube-shaped clocks installed high above the city streets. Thanks to the team at Lichterloh for inviting me to be part of this wonderful book!

50 Villages

David Zambrano’s “50 Villages” project took a small, international group of exceptional performers to 50 small villages around the world, to perform in main squares, farmers markets and schools. I’ve collaborated with David for many years, and I was glad to have the opportunity to document the tours through Costa Rica, South Korea, Poland and Slovenia. David was accompanied by two wonderful performers—Edivaldo Ernesto and Horacio Macuacua—both from Mozambique. In Korea the three dancers were joined by Young Cool Park (Seoul) and in Slovenia by Nina Fajdiga (Ljubljana). David Zambrano's mission in life is to bring people from all over the world together through dance and this project is the perfect example of that.

Changing Room: Gallery IV: Performances

Every week we had a live performance featuring the performers that are seen in the "Body and Space" gallery above. Several of the photos in this gallery were taken by our intern, Sherri McLeod (as noted).

Changing Room: Gallery III: The Visitor Series

While I worked and photographed in the storefront, people from the neighborhood came by to see what I was doing. I started taking portraits of these new and supportive friends. Many of them dropped by every day I was there, sometimes bringing their friends so they could show their portrait hanging on the wall.

Changing Room: Gallery II: Weekly Installations

I was very fortunate to collaborate once again with designer and architect Illya Azaroff on this project. Each week he designed a new installation, and each week we painted and changed the space into a different being.

Changing Room: Gallery I: Body and Space

I had several photo sessions in this small, intimate space, with performers of different body shapes and movement backgrounds. The changing installations gave both me and the performers a lot of creative energy, with everyone coming up with different ideas of how to relate to the space.

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.

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.

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.

Barcelona in 48 Hours

“Barcelona in 48 Hours” is both a film and a live multimedia performance piece, co-directed by Anja Hitzenberger and Edward Ratliff, and starring David Zambrano. The film has been shown in more than 20 festivals on three continents, and the performance version has been presented in New York, Vienna and Seoul.

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.

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.

Portraits of a City

In “Portraits of a City,” Anja photographed immigrants living in Salzburg, Austria, photographing one person each from as many countries as could be found, in locations of their choice. The project was commissioned by the Salzburg Szene Festival, and the photos were shown in a large-scale outdoor exhibition, on two bridges in the center of town and along the river Salzach. A catalogue was published as part of this show. There were 120 photos in the exhibition (Anja shared this project with photographer Anusha S. Yadav); this set of images is a selection of Anja's photos.

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