THE
GATEKEEPER

Situated near New York there is a luxury gated townhome community. The residents - many of whom are doctors, Wall Street professionals and successful entrepreneurs - are the most affluent in this area.
To enter this gated community, you must pass through a checkpoint:

A gatehouse with security guards, a surveillance system, a login console with an integrated surveillance camera. Only after a rigorous check, the heavy iron gate opens for residents and visitors.

 

I have access to this surveillance camera. Every minute this surveillance camera shoots one picture, which is automatically transmitted directly to my local storage.

1440 pictures are stored per day in this way. Which pictures are photographed, this determines therefore the coincidence.

 

The work THE GATEKEEPER was photographed by this camera via web from my studio in Zurich.

The work is an attempt to photograph a socio-demographic report by means of this surveillance technique. For this, the "setting" of a gated community is almost laboratory-like ideal, because all actors who contribute to the existence and functioning of such a small community have to pass this one camera. As a present photographer, as an author, I would never have been able to take these intense pictures. Only the distance of the web makes them possible.

 

It's a paradox: the further I get away from the people, the closer I get to them.

 

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The Gatekeeper will be published as a book and made available to the public in exhibitions (e.g., also via livestream, as long as the camera is active).

 

It will be accompanied and monitored by institutions from legal, ethical and journalistic perspectives.