Margins of Excess

Text by Fatoş Üstek
First published in Camera Austria International, no. 143, September, 2018



Max Pinckers’ series entitled "Margins of Excess" (2018) questions the plausibility of the image, under the immediate restraint to provide authenticity and desire through what is presented. Taking photography beyond the quest of capturing what is not yet documented into a frame, Pinckers concentrates on six subjects and on their respective narratives charged by states of curiosity, vulnerability, empathy and need of recognition. These four interrelated feelings span the photographic space of his series while he unfolds those speculative stories into the realms of the image marked by some form of truth. At times it is the performed identity, either for the camera or beyond, that precedes the facts, while at others it is the narrative that oscillates between possible worlds where the "Real" resides.