Valerie Schmidt is an artist, photographer and professor based in Germany. Her practice explores the body as a site of physical and psychological affect, working at the intersection of photography, performance and visual theory. Through staged and performative situations, she examines gesture, movement and bodily expression, questioning the legibility of body language and the relationship between conscious and unconscious action. Her work approaches photography as an experimental process of constructing images and exploring emotional thresholds, perception and empathy.
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legalBodies That Obey
Fernand Panajou
Leçons cliniques sur l'hystérie et l'hypnotisme faites à l'Hôpital Saint-André de Bordeaux. d'une Lettre-Préface de M. Le Professeur J.-M. CharlotPitres, AlbertVerlag: Ocatve Doin, Paris, 1891
installation view at “I am rooted but I flow”, Tufa, Trier, 2025
Bodies That Obey (in progress) investigates hypnosis as a state between consciousness and the unconscious, focusing on the relationship between bodily response, mental imagery and photographic representation. The series asks how invisible psychological processes and inner images might be translated into visual form, while examining the particular aesthetics of bodies under hypnosis—between conscious action, involuntary reaction, control and surrender.
The work combines photographic observations of hypnosis sessions with staged images, body studies, still lifes and visual research into the spaces, objects and techniques surrounding hypnosis. Particular attention is given to gestures, facial expressions and postures, as well as to the choreographic relationship between hypnotist and subject. Photographic sequences make these subtle shifts in movement and control visible, while subjective accounts of hypnotised people open up a perspective on the inner images and perceptual states that remain inaccessible to direct observation.
The project also draws on the history of hypnotic imagery, particularly nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographic practices in which scientific observation, performance and image-making became closely intertwined. Historical sources and photographic experiments by figures such as L. Löwenfeld and Albert von Schrenck-Notzing serve as points of reference for questioning how hypnotic states have been visually constructed and interpreted.
Bodies That Obey understands hypnosis not only as a psychological condition but as a visual and performative event. Photography becomes a means of negotiating the unstable boundary between inner and outer experience, conscious intention and bodily autonomy, and documentation and construction.