About This Project

Polly Hummel

The sun shines for everyone is a photographic immersion into the world of conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are part of humanity, they have always existed. They highlight hidden chains and manipulations, suggest that there are no coincidences, that nothing is what it seems. They are the unwanted children of the Enlightenment. Since 2020 these theories are present in my family. I am faced with searching for the truth about how the world really works. The basis is a flood of restricted access informations that contain something verosimil, something sinister that finally could explain why so much goes wrong in society. But also frightening is this deep mistrust of what is real and what is not. This delusion that we are being manipulated and that the world is a conspiracy leads to a series of photographic self-portraits. The project combines documentary photography and fiction. Through self-portraits, archival images and text, it investigates photography’s ambiguous relationship with truth. Engaging both documentary and conceptual photographic practices, it reconstructs a conspiratorial world to offer a broad understanding of our fears and beliefs. And more than a crazy idea, it is a conviction.

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