Which one is the doppelganger?

The doppelganger is an always unsettling idea. While today you might use the word to refer to a double or lookalike, historically a doppelganger represented evil and misfortune in a paranormal form and seeing a doppelganger almost always conincided with an unfortunate event. Swiss artist Cornelia Hediger tackles the darker connotation in her current show up at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn.

Hediger constructs complex narratives in this set of photos featuring two women posing together in different ways. These colorful and rich images suggest a narrative with a cast of two, or perhaps one, characters whose relationship is ambiguous and darkly suggestive.

2/15/08 

I love how she distorts perpective in these photos, so that above the woman in pink appears much small than the woman in black, and below the bed makes them both appear tiny.

12/03./07

I really enjoyed them, but as I viewed one after another I began to feel they were overly staged. There were so many props that the models enagaged with, when often their body language was the most telling and real part of the photo.

More images and exhibition details here. Cornelia Hediger is up at Klompching Gallery through October 21.