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Photographer Karolin Klüppel: Mädchenland – Kingdom of girls

A little girl plays with the severed legs of a hoofed animal. Another lies on a rock, dreaming, her feet dangling in the river. A third — with only her torso visible — poses on a wooden stool in a bare room, wearing a necklace made of dried fish skeletons on her bare chest. "Mädchenland," meaning Kingdom of Girls, is a photographic series developed by Karolin Küppel during her nine-month stay with the Khasi, a matrilineal people in the state of Meghalaya in northeast India. Here, girls are traditionally of particular importance and play an exposed role in the family. The line of succession passes through the youngest daughter. If she marries, her husband is taken into her family's house, and the children take their mother's name.

As in her previous works, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and "Peekaboo," with "Mädchenland" Küppel traces the concept of gender — so often assumed to be self-evident — its visibility and its manifestation in allocated roles.

Instead of presenting a broad-based analysis of these social structures and illustrating the positions and roles of girls, in this series, the photographer concentrates on the girls themselves. She does not consider them in their social, familial or societal contexts, instead choosing to contextualize them in their everyday physical environment.

Predominantly through individual portraits, Küppel shows the girls in the everyday lives of children: playing, posing with a transparent cloth thrown over them like a bride's veil or combing their hair in front of the mirror. However, the attitudes and expressions of the girls are by no means what you might expect to see when observing children play: Hardly any of them are laughing or running riot. Instead, they appear serious and grown-up, unmoved and uninvolved.

The prevailing tone of the images initially appears to be one of lethargy and depression. However, on closer inspection, a completely opposite impression emerges — namely a certain elevation of the girls above childhood, a strong self-awareness and a pronounced air of self-sufficiency. But the series is neither a decidedly sociological look at a society structured differently both culturally and socially, nor an attempt to romanticize a specific life situation. Rather, Küppel succeeds, impressively and expressively, in tracing and making visible the adult bearing within these girls' childishness. The artist achieves this on the image plane through a sensitive balance between documentation and composition. (Gabriele Neußer/Anna Van Lenten)

Based in Berlin, Klüppel focuses on gender relations and matrilineal or matriarchal societies. She studied at the School of Art and Design in Kassel and at the Faculdade de Belas Artes in Lisbon, and holds an MFA in photography. "Mädchenland" is part of the ongoing The Half King Photo Series in New York City, on view through Sept. 13.

(Photography by Karolin Klüppel)

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