Author Description

Hoffmann's photographs investigate the contingent and arbitrary character of the rules and roles that bring humans together in the bonds of civilized society. Her images resemble dramatizations of evertyday scenes that are re-enacted in order to impose a freeze-frame and capture the exact moment at shich overall social structures are made visible. Using strategies of play-acting, role reversal, and staging to slightly shift the scene's normal contexts, Hoffmann reveals the cultural conventions to be absurd, as random and manufactured as the rules of a child's game. The negotiation of these rules is portrayed as a tense struggle that takes place on a number of fronts, in spaces that are located internally, externally, and at the intersection of the two.