All The Things You Are

The publication All The Things You Are complies photographs by the artist Livio Baumgartner, which he took over four years in his father's home. Taken without his father’s knowledge, they document striking shifts in the apartment’s inventory, which reminded Baumgartner of contemporary art installations. Houseplants, yoga mats, boxes, baskets, candles, watering cans, clothes as well as countless other everyday objects all became the protagonists of his night-time photography tours. Instead of being annoyed by the piles of chaos, he documented them. In doing so, he also documented his father's attempt to create order, to find the right place for each thing, to arrange them aesthetically. The photographic presentation lends the arrangements a sculptural quality:
The photographs transcend their original intimacy, pointing to a time when most of us own far more than we need, and it is not without reason that books by ‘tidying up’ coaches become world bestsellers. Baumgartner's photographs tell of dealing with "all the things we are", which we acquire in the hope that they may be useful to us, embellish us or grant us new beginnings. Simone Lappert's poems takes up these explorations in literary form and add another layer to the photographs. Sometimes contemplative, sometimes tongue-in-cheek: just like the images themselves.