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Documentary Series

Torsten Schumann

Photographer

Torsten Schumann

TORPOR

Am I dreaming? Or is it a reality? Or can I not always properly separate the two? That's how it feels to me, at least in part, after I traveled into the unknown in early 2020. Suddenly, from the other side of the "world", I now continue to think about what was familiar to me before, and at the same time, I let myself get involved with my environment in China, which is new, exciting and still foreign to me. Although I feel in different places as well as at different times in each case a different resonance of my environment, this is for me at the latest then no longer relevant at all when everything connects in my dreams.
Torpor (lat. torpeur) is a dream-like, physically inactive state. By lowering their body temperature and metabolic rate, animals use torpor to conserve energy. It is possible that I, too, sometimes find myself in torpor, the floating, dream-like waking-sleeping state.

Torsten Schumann

Torsten Schumann (* 1975) is a Berlin based photographer. He is interested in everyday situations and details within urban spaces. He exhibited in group shows as the Royal Photographic Society London, CONTEXT of the Filter Photo Festival Chicago, Circulation(s) Paris and reGeneration4 in the Musée de l’Elysée de Lausanne. He has been awarded a PDN Photo Annual Award, OPUS Kulturmagazin Prize and the Arte Laguna Prize. His work is part of collections as of the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne and of the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection New York. His monograph "More Cars, Clothes and Cabbages" was published by Peperoni Books. "Off Keel" was shortlisted at the Dummy Awards UNSEEN 2016 and Kassel 2017. Photography helps Torsten Schumann question the everyday. The more he does this, the more he sees the world as an enigma.