SITE-SPECIFIC COMMISSION
HANDS THAT KNEW
A photographic narrative created for Hotel Schneider, tracing a family history through objects, images, and gestures passed from one generation to the next.
Hotel Schneider
Obertauern, Austria
2025
THE COMMISSION
Hands That Knew was created at a moment of transition, as Lisa took over the family hotel and sought a way to make its history present within the spaces she was now carrying forward.
The project follows several generations, with particular attention to her grandmother Rosina, whose strength, work, and care helped lay the foundations for what the hotel would become.
Within a wider art project exploring the hotel and its surroundings, my contribution turned inward, towards the people and intimate traces that shaped the life of the place.
OBJECTS AS MEMORY
Lisa and I spent a morning looking through objects and photographs gathered from different members of the family.
Old portraits, buttons, flowers, roots, threads, books, typewriters, traditional clothing, textiles, and jewellery became fragments through which the family story could be approached.
Rather than treating them as historical documents, I worked with them as carriers of memory. Each object held the trace of someone’s hands, habits, work, and presence.
The title Hands That Knew refers to the hands that built, cared for, and carried the hotel forward, and to the knowledge passed quietly from one generation to the next.
The title Hands That Knew refers to the hands that built, cared for, and carried the hotel forward.
WORKING WITH THE PLACE
Over the course of one week, I transformed several hotel rooms, each with a different orientation, into temporary studios.
Working exclusively with natural light, I followed its movement through the rooms and allowed it to shape each composition. Every object photographed belonged to the family or was found on site.
Initially conceived as seven works, the project expanded to eleven as new relationships between images, objects, and stories emerged.
SELECTED WORKS
THROUGH THE HOTEL
The eleven works were installed along the corridors of the hotel’s three floors and in selected common areas.
As guests move through the building on the way to their rooms, they encounter fragments of the family’s history. The works allow the past to remain quietly present within the daily life of the hotel.
PROJECT DETAILS
Commissioned for: Hotel Schneider
Art consultancy: Velvenoir
Location: Obertauern, Austria
Year: 2025
Scope: Eleven site-specific photographic works
Process: Created on location using natural light and objects from the family archive
ART COMMISSIONS
I create site-specific photographic works for hospitality spaces, interiors, and private collections, developed in response to the history, atmosphere, and identity of each place.
For commissions and project enquiries: