Photography 2025
Inspired by the ZEITmagazin article:
“My Ancestor Was Burned as a Witch—What Connects Me to Her”
(ZEITmagazin No. 11, March 13, 2025) by Juliane Schiemenz.
WITCHES IN THE FEED — A STATE OF AFFAIRS
between self-assertion and projection, vulnerability and resistance, power and visibility.
The witch is back—not from the forest, but from the feed.
She reveals herself, speaks, is heard—and is persecuted once again.
This time not with torches, but with language, algorithms, and structural violence.
Femicide is not a metaphor. Women are murdered because they are women—because they resist, speak out, and live. Every number represents a systemic failure; every headline represents a life that should have been protected.
The language of the media also contributes to this. Headlines still trivialize perpetrators, question victims, and shift responsibility. The reversal of victim and perpetrator remains part of the narrative: women must justify themselves, explain themselves, and prove that they are truly victims.
witch
oh so unwomanly! (with the short hair)
oh way too old!
At the same time, a digital culture of dehumanization is on the rise. On social media, women’s bodies are sexualized, and femininity is commodified. Influencers and so-called “manfluencers” perpetuate gender roles that portray power as masculinity. In closed online groups, strategies are shared on how to control, degrade, or abuse women. These are not isolated incidents—they are digital witch hunts.
shedding the skin
The mechanisms are old; only the platforms are new.
The witch rejects this logic.
She names what must be made visible.
Not as a myth, but as a fact.
Not as a symbol, but as resistance.
oh so ambitious! oh so loud! (you should stuff your mouth - who controls your body?)
Exploring this topic led me to reflect on it myself:
What does “witch” mean today—in everyday life, at work, in my own body?
The deeper I delved into it, the clearer it became just how relevant and multifaceted this image is.
The original series of three photographs grew to six—each image offering a different echo of these questions:
oh so greedy! (grateful for the small piece of the cake?)
Having children is also political in this context.
Motherhood without a man—as a conscious decision and an act of self-determination—contradicts the traditional narrative in which dependence is regarded as natural.
While online movements like “trad wife” romanticize a return to domestic subordination, a societal backlash against women’s rights is growing at the same time: self-determination is being renegotiated, freedom is being vilified, and care work is being glorified.
oh so emotional! (get a grip, female rage, you monster)
A woman who breaks free from toxic relationships often continues to bear the invisible forms of violence that linger afterward—psychological, emotional, subtle, yet potent.
This violence is rarely overt, but it persists. It eats away at time, energy, and self-worth.
It is both structural and personal—a means of curbing autonomy.
Breaking free from it is not a break with femininity, but rather its most radical form:
to choose, to protect, to persevere—without continuing to endure.
