The title "AusZeit" of my ongoing project is significant in that the people shown on my pictures often look for a little break in their everyday life, leave their routine behind for a moment. The series started in 2018 with the completion of the seminar The Theatre of Real Life by Wolfgang Zurborn and the resulting book publication of the participans. In my photo selection was one picture showing a pub named "AusZeit". See AusZeit I
We realized that this name is a good title for my series. As I found that the name generally fits in well with my pictures, I decided later to continue using this title to show some of my current images in an ongoing process, which also reflects my approach. So I proceed less in terms of content or theme in the narrower sense. Rather, I follow the "rhythm of the street" in a self-determined way, immerse myself in my surroundings and move around like on a huge stage in the midst of ‘my’ protagonists, whose complex game of life I try to capture photographically.
"The people Heike Frielingsdorf shows in her pictures are frequently looking for a time to leave the everyday routine behind. But they seem to get lost in the often whimsical-looking backdrop worlds of a leisure culture. With her keen power of observation, the photographer develops a look somewhat between loving attitude towards the people and fierce irony in depicting an impersonal and sterile environment. The images never aim at a flat punch line to make fun of people. Beyond any slapstick, her humor emerges in a much more subtle way through the virtuoso interplay of different levels of action in complex pictorial compositions. In her photographs, Heike Frielingsdorf creates stages in our contemporary world on which she gives space to objects and people in their living environment to tell stories out of themselves." Wolfgang Zurborn, 2018