Photos Poke Fun at the Rules You Blindly Follow Every Day

Whether we're aware of them or not, our daily lives are constantly influenced by a set of institutionalized designs---everything from traffic patterns to school curriculum. Photographer Frauke Thielking calls attention to this fact with her series Ready Set Go.

Whether we're aware of them or not, our daily lives are constantly influenced by a set of institutionalized designs---everything from traffic patterns to school curriculum. As a way to call our attention to this fact, photographer Frauke Thielking created Ready, Steady, Go, a photo series that takes a playful look at our interactions with these systems.

“I’m very interested in psychological topics, sociological questions...things like normality and deviation, individuality versus uniformity,” she says. "The pictures represent different stages of orientation in life, and it ranges from the very adaptive behavior of the human being [to] following rules and norms...to the disengagement from our conventions."

Thielking doesn't necessarily think that adhering to rules and boundaries is a bad thing, but she thinks we should at least be aware of them. To help make the point, her photos represent our compliance in an exaggerated way. People in her photos mimic cars, bulldozers, even wind turbines, posing as symbols of civilization’s established arrangements regarding transportation, mining, energy, and so on. The photos are meant to point out realities, but she also hopes they indulge in a sense of absurdity and humor.

“The staged pictures I thought would be a funny way to represent something,” she says. “I thought it would be funny if people would act like cars [for example], because they represent something very automatic with no emotion.”

Each photo is presented as half of a diptych. Next to each staged image of people posing is a complementary image of urban design or architecture. The architectural side of the pairing also draws our attention to the physical forms of containment that govern our lives.

“I’m always attracted by graphic environments,” she says. “For example, a stadium with its lines, parking lots with their lines, and so on."

The series was shot for Thielking's diploma program at Dortmund University in Germany, where she studied communication design with an emphasis on photography. Back when she started, Google Maps wasn’t a thing, so most of the environmental shots were discovered by hunting around her city by bike or car. Some, like the triangular intersection in China that inspired its partner shot (slides 7 and 8), were discovered entirely by accident.

As a student she drew heavily on a number of theoretical works for inspiration, like Elias Cannetti’s Crowds and Power and Mind, Self and Society by George Herbert Mead, among other books that explore the relationships between individuals, symbols, and society.

Translating those kinds of ideas into a photograph is a tall order, but Thielking is just as concerned with creating an engaging image as an informative one. The specific message may or may not connect with every viewer, but provoking any reaction is a good thing.

"I like playful stagings a lot, and pictures that evoke a certain sense of humor and curiosity," she says. "I try to create scenes, situations or moments people can identify with."

More of Thielking's work will be included in the Dresden Public Art View exhibition in Germany from July 29 through August 7. Ready, Steady, Go will be on display at the 14th Pinyao International Photography Festival in China's Shanxi Province from September 19 through 25.