CLAUDIA KURSAWE | Pictures of desire

What are these creatures in the nocturnal forest? A metamorphosis has taken place. “Humans and animals have become one. All my series explore transformation,” says Marko Zink. “The hybrids remind us that we ourselves come from the animal kingdom, yet we see ourselves as the crown of creation. There is more ferocity within us than we might like to admit.”

The masks glow, evoking a futuristic, almost science-fiction-like aura. The luminous beauty beckons the viewer closer. The photographer deliberately plays with this desire to approach. Yet the initial attraction soon shifts into something more uncertain. “It’s like dancing in a club. Wrapped in fog and lasers, you see only the silhouette of your partner, and yet it stirs something within you,” Zink explains. At the same time, a subtle tension warns against deception, as the Vienna-based artist notes: “Nothing is as it seems at first glance.”

In these photographs, masculine and feminine aspects dissolve into one another, echoing the concept of anima and animus. According to C.G. Jung, they represent the soul and the inner figures of our dreams: the anima as the feminine potential within every man, and the animus as the masculine potential within every woman. Which part of us, then, leads the charge in our desires?

It is no coincidence that these images were created in the forest, at the edge of the woods—sites historically associated with power—between midnight and one o’clock in the morning. There is a certain power in the freedom of magic. And yet, everything is carefully orchestrated: long exposures, choices of filmstock, and the staging of scenes through analog technology. Two worlds converge: the rational realm on the one hand and the realm of sensory perception and imagination on the other. As Marko Zink puts it: “I dream up the images and then let the magic of the moment guide me.”