Jens Sundheim

For more than 20 years, Jens Sundheim follows the trail of public webcams: cameras that are installed in public or private spaces, automatically record video and broadcast it on the internet. At so far as 900 locations in 25 countries, Sundheim positions himself in front of these cameras and stares back, always wearing the same clothes, always posing the same way. Opposed to the masses of people that are passing by these cameras, being recorded unknowingly and passively most of the time, the observed becomes the observer, actively confronting the gaze of the unknown force behind the lens. Demonstratively burying his hands in his pockets to underline that it is not him triggering the shutter.

Not only is „The Traveller” a reflection on the medium of photography, of authorship and originality, the long-term investigation also is a chronicle of an individual paired with the illustration of technological progress. Recent, more and more frequently used AI-operated webcams are not pointed at a specific spot but follow the movement of people and make positioning himself in front of the camera significantly harder for Sundheim.

This change is illustrated well in the nine pictures of football pitches, recorded between 2006 and 2024, two of which were specifically made for this project. One of the locations, the club house of the allotment-garden club Gildenpark, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a panopticon-based society in which regimented heights of hedges and fences guarantee an all-time view into the private spaces of the denizens and thereby nipping incorrect behaviour in the bud.

„The Traveller” was devised in collaboration with Bernhard Reuß, Wiesbaden.

Jens Sundheim (*1970 in Dortmund, lives and works in Dortmund) studied photography at the Technical College Dortmund, University of Plymouth in Exeter, GB, Ostkreuz-School in Berlin and HAW Hamburg. His work deals with the reflection of the artistic medium of photography, among others for the observation of the invisible, the representation of knowledge, for utopias and planned cities and the entailing relation between control and loss of control as well as individual and collective. His works themselves are object of artistic and academic research and are exhibited internationally. Sundheim is chairperson of Künstlerhaus Dortmund and is appointed teaching assignments since 2019 for Experimental Photography at the TU Dortmund

Website Artist
Website Project The Traveller
Instagram: @jens_sundheim

Text: Linda Schröer
Translation: Matthias Fabry
Photo: Jens Sundheim