Erasmus Schröter began working on his Contest series in 2010, alongside his involvement in the Wave Gothic world festival in Leipzig. The models posing for these photographs sidestep day-to-day life, thwarting traditional role models by consistently transgressing sexual, religious and moral boundaries and taboos. Many of the young men have chosen to provoke, to dazzle with bizarre roles to which they have lastingly dedicated themselves, partly through changes to their physical appearance. The extensive series consists of large-format likenesses captured in colour and always taken in neutral, uneventful surroundings. Through his analogue colour photographs he engages in the current gender debate, addressing it from a spectrum of unusual and original perspectives. Erasmus Schröter does not depict the stronger sex, but protagonists who appear rather fragile, as if they have lost their equilibrium.

Erasmus Schröter, *1956 in Leipzig, Germany, † 2021.