Books

Orders
[RVB]

In 2024, Stefanie Moshammer was invited to photograph the Eastern & Oriental Express Belmond train, a journey that weaves through the lush landscapes of Malaysia. Drawn to the unknown, Moshammer found a unique resonance with the train’s route, which traverses both the vibrant jungles and the fading echoes of historic towns. The photographs transcend the physical world of the train, capturing its essence through a lens that speaks to the passage of time and the allure of distant, forgotten places.

Moshammer’s work blends a range of visual techniques, and besides her own photographs, she merges stills from short films shot with an iPhone and manipulated screenshots of found images. These elements are cropped, blurred, or pixelated to create a disorienting yet captivating atmosphere – one that blurs the boundary between reality and dream, invoking a sense of timelessness and quiet nostalgia.

The collection of collectible photobooks ‘As Seen By’ is a series inspired by Belmond‘s one-of-a-kind hotels and destinations through the eyes of talented image makers from around the world.

Orders
[Louis Vuitton]
[Studio Stefanie Moshammer] signed copies

The origin of this project lies in Stefanie Moshammer's intricate relationship with her hometown, Vienna – a connection marked by complexity rather than conventional fluidity. This nuanced rapport forms the cornerstone of the book's concept. The project addresses the paradox of external presumptions and stereotypes often associated with Vienna from an outsider's perspective while offering a personal journey into the artist's unique viewpoint, enriched with her own anticipations and emotions.
She blends archival materials, new photographs, and digital artifacts from extensive online exploration. It mirrors the way we approach new destinations: through online searches, recommendations, and the anticipation of unique experiences. The book reflects this process with colored printed sheets that emulate online research and email conversations, combining objective observation and personal interpretation.
Its pages encourages the reader to embark on a fresh exploration of Vienna that goes beyond the constraints of time, place, and even the boundaries of their own imagination.
Commissioned by Louis Vuitton Fashion Eye.

Orders
[Éditions Images Vevey]

Each Poison, A Pillow combines fragments from found footage, private archives, and digital interfaces to offer an unreserved perspective on the subject of women and alcohol(ism). In exploring the phenomenon of women's drinking habits, Stefanie Moshammer also delves into her own family history, weaving together content from social media, medical and scientific research, and advertisements.

Orders
[C/O Berlin] 


Press
[It's Nice That] 
[Text by Andreas Prinzing]
[Sleek] 
[FAZ] 
[BJP] 

"2411 Mason Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada. A palm-lined, sunny suburban street. A car pulls up to a bungalow driveway. A man gets out, walks a few steps, and presses a button. The doorbell rings. Footsteps. A young woman opens the door. They make eye contact and exchange a handful of sentences.
He’s looking for his ex-girlfriend who used to live there. She shakes her head. The car drives off, only to return a few minutes later. He asks another question, she says no again. The screen goes black. A few days later, a typewritten love letter arrives. So the story begins.
 <...>
In an obsessive love letter, the writer offers the woman, who as an “Austrian girl” exudes an exotic attraction for him, his deeply clichéd and materialistic version of the American Dream. He woos her through simple means and with seemingly disarming openness, and tries to persuade her that it is
worth embarking on a romance with him. As the central incentive and promise, he presents an arsenal of bedrooms and cars, which he uses to demonstrate his potential. His writing style, argumentation, and articulated value systems are unadorned. Besides a consumptionoriented lifestyle centered around growth and excess, the letter expresses a conservative image of women. The woman, attributed with diverse characteristics, is seen as a unique specimen, which, following the logic of accumulation, is there to be conquered and added to his inventory of objects. While he woos her, Troy is already imagining their future together. In his glorification of the young woman, he displays the kind of melodramatic exaggeration which we usually only encounter on advertising billboards. Much like Las Vegas’s countless architectural imports from Italy, the woman here is also stylized into an exotic, transfigured image. Troy’s desires and promises encouraged Moshammer to channel the situation into a productive stimulus for her fine-art photography and to counteract Troy’s reduction of her to a mere projection surface with an opinionated statement of her own. Rather than acquiescing to the role of a passive object, she began to confront the unusual situation actively through the camera’s lens—looking back at him in the process, in a reversal of the subject-object relationship. In an act of visual self-definition, she counters Troy’s fantasies with a pictorial composition that unites several perspectives in a narrative space that she controls. The series derives its tension from the triangular constellation of the photographer, her antagonist Troy, and the viewers, who follow their roleplays and games of hide-and-seek that oscillate between fact and fiction from an observer’s perspective."

– Andreas Prinzing, Art Critics, DE

Orders
[Skinnerboox] sold out

Press
[Collector Daily] 
[Best Photobooks of 2017] 
[Dazed]
[Zeit Magazin]


"The book is an exciting mix of architectural shots inside favelas, unexpected still lifes, curious observations, and portraits of local residents.  <...> Land of Black Milk is Moshammer‘s personal vision of the city, taken as an outsider open to observing and exploring beyond the obvious themes of stunning beaches, beautiful women, and spectacular carnivals. She mixes fragments of the dreamy mood of Rio with hints of its present problems of violence, inequality and discrimination. The noticeable placement of the text prominently adds another layer to the interpretation of the place. 'Rio de Janeiro is not so much one city as different worlds. Multiplied realities of one place and the space in between. A two-ness, two warring ideals in one body with an inherently split personality. The two-ness of a land, vulnerable and powerful at the same time.' The visual narrative is elusive and poetic, presenting the city as the complex co-existence of multiple realities."

– by Olga Yatskevich, Collector Daily, US

Orders
[Fotohof edition] sold out
[Studio Stefanie Moshammer] only Special Edition book & print € 500,–

Reviews
[Collector Daily]
[Best Books of 2015]
[Yet-Magazine]

“For this series, Moshammer photographed seven dancers, ranging in age from 21 to about 50. Her intimate portraits were shot against the backdrop of the city and often in funky, down and out hotel rooms. While her photographs give little insight into personal life stories of the women she depicts, the pictures capture the nuances of their immediate environments and the illusionary worlds they have worked hard to create, walking a blurred line somewhere between reality and fantasy. 
A fuzzy black and white aerial map of Las Vegas, with two dozen places marked with jaunty pink hearts, serves as an introduction to the book, and Moshammer’s photographs guide us through this stark tour, exploring the world that exists beyond the flashy casinos, the luxury nightclubs, and the fast cars. The mix of portraits of local residents, banal scenes, in-between landscapes, and curious details depicts Las Vegas as a mysterious city of extremes and contrasts. A picture of a night road covered with stains (is it blood? or maybe machine oil), a glimpse of a naked woman in high heels on her knees next to a wooden table, and a shot of a red ceiling (an obvious reference to Eggleston), set the mood for the fragmented, dark, and often bizarre visual narrative.

One of the first images in the book shows money thrown on the tiled floor and hands piling it up – but these are just one dollar bills, an appropriate metaphor for this slice of Las Vegas. The portraits that follow are both controlled poses and impromptu modeling shots, ranging in mood from confident (in an explicit slinky coverall in a tiger pattern) to eager (in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and tiny shorts). One of the most surreal images in the book depicts a young girl sitting on a bed in a motel room with the walls painted like lush leafy green jungles; her red bikini matches an apple on the tree in the background, adding something mythical to an otherwise ordinary moment. There are also photos of women whose faces we don’t see – they are hidden by shadows, cropped out, or shot from behind, like the perfect white bed with a woman in a black underwear seen from the back. Moshammer spent time with all of these women, listening to their stories, and building some level of trust. Her efforts to connect with the subjects are reflected in the portraits, where the sitters appear confident, relaxed, and at ease with the camera. But as these stories unfold, we can’t help but wonder where the line between documentation and fiction really is.
Playing the game of the city, the strippers are part of the machine that keeps Las Vegas alive and moving. And part of what Moshammer hones in is this creation of artificial identities that fulfill men’s desires and fantasies. Images of bright pink Cadillacs, exotic plants, tattoos, and golden interior decorations represent fragments of this façade, while shots of the dusty landscape and the burning desert hint at the need for a possible escape. Vegas and She becomes a poetic metaphor for the whole Las Vegas experience, where the harsh reality of nature stands in contrast to the city driven by desire and imagination.

In general, the flow of Moshammer’s images works well in book form, as the layout and presentation allow photographs of various sizes to interact. Pink and red are the dominant colors in the series and a few images have pink borders around them, reinforcing this palette. Quotes by Lewis Carroll, Vladimir Nabokov, and the artist (also with pink backgrounds) have been placed between the pages, adding additional reference points to the larger story and helping to blend the personal and the fictional into one. A hotel bill and an inmate bail bond receipt are used for the endpapers, gently hinting at the extremes of potential Las Vegas experiences.

Moshammer’s poetic writing seems to sum it all up: ‘Oh Vegas, Vegas and She. A report of circumstances, evidence, an indication of love and sorrow’. Her Las Vegas is full of ambiguous contradictions, both ordinary and extraordinary, a place where female reality is entirely (and often depressingly) negotiable.”

– by Olga Yatskevich, Collector Daily, US

“This project appears as a synthesis of various olive-grey shades of a single night : a night in the city that embraces every night — alive, pulsing and fluttering: Las Vegas.

The contents of the book seem to be as if they were dumped from a drawer of an arid Nevada motel— flesh and feeling are tied together. The author, absorbed by empathy, forces us to engage with the glazed reality of her protagonists: the sandy desert backgrounds, the chaotic dance of neon, humour, tears, glitter, violence and camaraderie.
Environments exude emotions, such as pain, misery and awkwardness.
Human portraits don’t have a specific connotation, yet, through their vividness, are able to reveal features that can transform a face and a body into a genuine character.
The constant use of a flash does not flatten the image — even if it is always the protagonist. Rather, it functions in a way as if probing the walls of a cave: walls close to one’s fingertips, yet almost incomprehensible. The eye of the photographer — moved by a powerful and emotional scenario — translates the bitter and rough stories into sweet and smooth images.” 

– by Mariella Amabili, Yet Magazine, CH

“Despite the saturated glitz and gloss floating on the surface of these images, Vegas and She offers a subtle yet devastating insight into the moral desert that is Las Vegas, and hauntingly hints at the desperate reality that sits at the heart of this city, plagued by fantasies of lust, depravity and vice. Moshammer quietly hovers around the edges of the lives of strippers, escorts, and call-girls, intimating rather than exploiting their experiences — and the extremes to which they are driven — in a manner that is respectfully restrained but nevertheless deeply effective. The photographs themselves are visually seductive and seemingly ambiguous, and yet collectively they evoke a profound sense of sadness that is both painfully bleak and powerfully resonant.”

– by Aaron Schuman, photographer, curator, writer, US