TOP OF THE WORLD (2008-2013) / PERMISSION (2013)

Christian Kryl has worked for some years now on documenting places where the international jet set traditionally gather and which have acquired an ‘über-imago’ through the media (particularly the tabloids). Through various angles he thus makes a little documented social upper crust his subject.

In 2008 he began TOP OF THE WORLD, a series on the Swiss winter sport centre Sankt Moritz, for which he photographed the visitors trying to blend in with that über-imago in an attempt to appropriate something of the aura of Sankt Mortiz for themselves. As Kryl observes, it is the sort of place where one can still wear furs without others giving you funny looks. He sees that as a metaphor for the mores of the people who are behind the unreal numbers of bonuses, bailouts and billion dollar profits.

For The Sequel Kryl once again photographed in Sankt Moritz and in Monaco, a place with an über-imago deeply rooted in the glamour of the 1950s and ’60s. In the series PERMISSION Kryl focuses on the current surveillance culture, which has become particularly intensive in the microcosm of Monaco, in an effort to safeguard the privacy and security of its residents. In Monaco, ‘a ghetto for the rich, who live in flats because they don’t want to pay taxes’, there doesn’t seem to be any public space left any more. To photograph on the street one must apply for no less than three permits – which the police and private security guards were constantly asking Kryl to produce. The new series is comprised of self-portraits in which such checks are recorded.