Mirt vagy te, ha lehetsz n is? (Why be You When You Can be Me?) – by Petra Collins

Collins new photobook was commissioned by the cult erotic magazine Baron and is titled Mirt vagy te ha lehetsz n is The Hungarian phrase translates as Why be you when you can be me and is borrowed from a 1998 Canadian TV commercial Boutique about two girls who enter a surreal makeup store where a woman continuously says the phrase through a screen Collins choice of Hungarian is a nod to her mother who emigrated to Canada from Hungary in the 1980s

For the sixth edition of Baron artist Petra Collins flips the camera lens onto herself more specifically into herself Uninhibited gross disjointed and confusing Collins places us in a world filled with perverse personal thoughts and lucid landscapes With the books Hungarian title Mirt vagy te ha lehetsz n is Collins asks us Why be you when you can be me Collins uses the camera as the third person It captures historical truths such as a time and place and an emotional reality with a complicated relationship to intention and perception Working with the sculptor Sarah Sitkin Collins creates moulds of her body as well as her sisters to gain ownership in a world where our bodies live in multiple realities

English
166 pages
22 x 285 cm
Hard Back