Uwe Laysiepen - Ulay (1943)
Frank Uwe Laysiepen became known as performer and partner of Marina Abramovic. Together they performed under the name Relation Works in museums all over the world, between 1975 and 1988. In these performances, the pair always engaged in confrontation with each other - and with themselves – putting both their own physical and mental endurance and that of their audiences to the test. Before working with Abramovic, Ulay had already been a prolific photographer, working in polaroids, and after 1988 he returned to this medium. For a long period of time, he worked with a unique, room-sized polaroid camera that allowed him to take life-sized photos. With this camera, Ulay made a vast number of self-portraits known as 'autopolaroids.' Because they are polaroids, these photographs have no negatives.
An important recurring theme in Ulay's work is the search for identity. 'Photography freezes a moment in less than 1/10th of a second,' he says, 'so it shows us things we can't observe. I see photography as a wonderful supplemental tool for our visual perception.'* In his most recent project, Water to All, he examines the lack of drinking water in the world and the submergence of the Netherlands.
