Taking Off

‘Taking Off’ is a real picture story of a failed marriage, of sexual frustration and voyeurism. An extraordinary amount of photographs and cut-up collages comprise an archival vertigo of amateur nude art. Through people she met on a journey through the United States, Mariken Wessels gained access to the studio and the entire archive of Henry, as well as full consent over its use. She started redacting the work and rearranging it, so to form an artist’s book, in which the audience will be invited to a journey into Henry’s vision of his wife and muse, and to discover the photographic obsessions of Henry, which through encountering them in the book could become our obsessions too.