Written by Margaux Villard

Cosmetic surgery is a fun yet disturbing work by German artist Alma Haser, who defaces her sitters using origami.

Alma Haser graduated in 2010 in photography in art practice from Nottingham Trent University. Giving free rein to her creativity, she photographs, films and gets fully involved in her projects: she often plays a part, sits, dresses up to play the model. It is not the first time Alma used origami, her poetically beautiful Paper paved the way for Cosmetic Surgery in which the origami plays a central role.

For this series alma proceeded following three steps: “Firstly Alma photographs her sitter, then prints multiple images of the subjects face and folds them into a complicated origami modular construction, which then gets placed back onto the original face of the portrait. Finally the whole thing is re-photographed.”

The origami creates an eerie discrepancy between the bewildering alien-looking beings and the human faces, looking unflappable. This increases the feeling of uncanniness already initiated by the rendering of the faces. Through the process of concealing the true features of her characters and recreating them with origami, Alma appropriates her characters: “By de-facing her models she has made their portraits into her own creations.”

It is impossible for the viewer to picture what the person actually looks like.  An origami is supposed to represent something we can make out at once. Here, on the contrary the origami veils the faces of the characters and therefore acts as a sort of drive for the viewer to mentally reconstruct the sitter’s physiognomy.

This work also gives the origami a two-dimensional characteristic. Origami is something playful, meticulous and contemplative.  Here, it becomes a photographic accessory that unshapes, removes the structure of the faces and changes them into “flattened sculptures”. Consequently, the Origami functions as a go-between sculpture and photography and is a great illustration of Alma Haser’s art scope and talent.