“Kanny Shade” reveals Moschitz’s ongoing critical engagement with the idea that photographs are capable of reliably depicting reality. The artist’s first monograph brings together portraits, still lifes and descriptions of places: the sujets are visually pushed to their limits not only through composition and lighting in the photographic image, but also during the printing process through the addition of neon colours. Through consistent framing and a persistent search for subjects, Moschitz extracts fragments from their surroundings and gives them a universal, almost iconic character. The book thus reflects on and questions our perception, the illusory power of photography and our relationship with digital images.

The title refers to the concept of the Uncanny Valley, a phenomenon primarily associated with the video game industry, film and animation. It describes an eerie moment when artificial or hyper-realistic representations come too close to the reality. In „Kanny Shade“, it is precisely this closeness between the subject and the way it is depicted in digital photography that is explored. In doing so, ambiguities and dualities of perception come to the fore: the familiar and the uncanny, shade and shadow, the world and its image.