Pan´s Cave | Greece 2009

Employing themes of classical and documentary travel photography, Baiker constructs new semiotic connections between historical and contemporary imagery. Cornerstones of Greek culture and history – politics, seafaring, architecture, sculpture and the theatre – become the parameters delineating the imagery of this project. The book’s title, Pans Cave, is both example and representation of this kind of interplay between myths and reality. Using photography in a precisely calculated, temporally and locally selective way, Baiker creates new contexts and insights.

Thomas Donga Durach

Galeria Do Rock | São Paulo 2003-2011

… There is a reason why
trend scouts are sent to São Paolo. In his photographic portraits of young visitors of the Brazilian shopping mall „Galeria do Rock“, Ralph Baiker shows us the eternally strange in fashion looks that always seem alike. The customers already know the fashion and life styles which are on sale here, offering a sense of belonging: punk, disco, pop, techno, gothic, industrial, afro, rock, reggae. Every one of the people portrayed is a „medium level star“. Every one becomes an original in his or her disguise. These are wonderful tales in which everyone can participate after his or her own fashion.
Like so much in life, Baiker‘s portraits are about symbols of belonging, about style and identity. They seem to ask the viewer, but where now do we belong to in our privileged consumers‘ world of change and return? Who am I, when there seems to be nothing old and nothing new?
For his case studies, photographer Ralph Baiker is drawn to the historical and renovated shopping mall with its 400 stores, tattoo-studios, hairdressing parlours right in the middle of the old heart of São Paolo - one of the so-called mega-metropolises in a country like Brazil, never tiring, but one of the emerging nations which can never get rid of the stigma of bankruptcy.
Baiker‘s theme are the people of the future, today‘s youth cultures – thus the very cultures which make everyone‘s heart beat faster. Wolfgang Tillmans discovers similar themes in the faces of the party crowd and within soft colour plays. Nan Goldin‘s photos tell about youth‘ unbreakable strength, which she discerns and saves even in their self-destruction. Ralph Baiker‘s portraits of young people and his pictures of the overlapping urban architecture are even more so about „misconceptions“ of alleged original ideas coming from the „first world“. But there are playful varieties and variations bursting with their own energy. … His photographic series bears testimony to the indescribable wealth of reality, which can but only be discovered when the blurred facets are recognised.

K. ADAMOPOULOS

Motoboys | São Paulo 2007

Motoboys are among the lowest caste in Brazilian society. They are couriers for documents, money, pizza, or other goods, and they keep the city alive. Mostly they are teenage dare-devils fighting their way through the never-ending lines of cars. Every day two motoboys dies in traffic accidents on the streets of São Paolo. Motoboys are not very popular - during their reckless manoeuvres between the cars caught in traffic jams they often unintentionally break off side mirrors, scratch the paint of the car, or cause accidents.

Motoboys is a series of portraits.