Love Letters

Photography, Video, and Actions, 2023

Love Letters functions as both archive and laboratory, where Hillerbrand+Magsamen transform ordinary materials into sculptural meditations on intimacy and memory. In this body of work, each object operates as a kind of talisman—an artifact charged with sentiment, reflection, and the residue of human touch. Within this experimental process, gestures of construction and observation become acts of care, echoing Gaston Bachelard’s notion that the home is not merely a shelter but a vessel of dreams and remembrance. Photographed within the controlled environment of the studio and exposed to the contingencies of natural light and weather, the works oscillate between permanence and ephemerality. Love Letters offers a quiet phenomenology of attachment, revealing how the simplest forms and gestures can carry the weight of affection and the persistence of time.  

In the Love Letters diptychs, a single object is photographed twice—once in the studio and once in nature. This pairing reveals the object’s shifting identity as it moves between controlled and unpredictable environments. The diptych structure becomes a study in perception, emphasizing how light, context, and atmosphere transform meaning. Rather than simple documentation, these works act as visual experiments—observations of material, memory, and change. Each image pair functions like a record from an ongoing investigation, tracing how intimacy and attention alter the way we see and understand the familiar.