MEET Maggie, the rosy-cheeked product of a real-life transatlantic love story.
The mysterious brunette is the subject of award-winning photographer Ofer Wolberger's new show at Chelsea's Michael Hoppen Gallery, his first collaboration with fiancée Billie Martineau. The pair met on a social networking site and spent six-months exchanging emails - bonding over a shared love of old films, indie music and photography - before finally meeting and falling in love.
They have spent the past two years travelling between New York, where they live together, and Billie's former home in the Loire Valley, France, shooting the series (Life With) Maggie.
The striking character (portrayed by Billie, wearing a mask given to her by her parents) appears against a host of stunning but timeless backdrops, always wearing the same wide-eyed open-mouthed expression and never quite blending in.
Both a sideways look at tourism and our need to create a 'visual identity', the series is also a chronicle of the artists' blossoming romance. The Informer caught up with Ofer to ask what makes Maggie tick and what he's like as a tourist.
Who is Maggie and what does she represent?
Maggie is constructing a visual identity by the places and things she poses with in the photographs.
These choices reflect Maggie's tastes and interests. That identity is abstract and can be read in different ways.
The locations she ends up in are ones that spark her interest, places that might have a resonance. For example, the James Dean image.
We knew on coming across it Maggie would want to stop there.
It's definitely interesting to think about the impulse to take a photo and what it means.
People feel a need to belong or understand where they fit in and like the re-assurance that a photograph can represent. Maybe each recorded moment is like evidence of a life lived.
How much was the project inspired by your online relationship with Billie?
The project is collaborative and Billie inspires me a lot. It would not exist had we not met by chance online and it has become a way we have learned about each others' cultures.
It's quite a collaborative effort in that Billie is the model and helps with the styling, art direction and finding the locations. The series is very much a reflection of both our interests and follows the course our relationship has taken. Maggie was an excuse to learn about each other and our different cultures, because I'm American and she's French. That's why we focused the series in France and in America.
You say the photos "reflect on the strange culture of tourists". What sort of a tourist are you?
While I'm travelling I rarely put myself in a picture in order to remember a place or the fact that I have been somewhere.
Nor do I go out of my way to photograph myself with friends while I'm just out and about enjoying the everyday.
I don't take travel images and I do think my photos say a lot about who I am, where I come from and what my interests are. If you look closely at the Maggie project, I think it's quite obvious what my and Billie's interests are.
Regarding the photographic aspect of the project and choosing specific subjects, (Life With) Maggie has given me an enormous amount of freedom in that I can basically put Maggie into any situation and make a photograph.
She is, in essence, a license to document and record things that I normally wouldn't be able to bring myself to photograph.
