What started as a collaboration between IMBA and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna - Department of Applied Photography- led to an extremely fruitful final product:

“Looking Glass” is released by De Gruyter publishing house (Edition Angewandte) in November 2018, it is internationally available, online, and in selected book/arts and museum shops.

The centerpiece is the book: Important scientific milestones in the history of IMBA are interpreted by artists using photography. Based on an initial dialogue with the scientists, the artists visualized different research projects - they portrayed the central molecular mechanism of each paper in their own way. The whole process has been really inspiring and fruitful, both, for the scientist, and the artists and we are excited to present our first molecular story book. “Looking Glass” combines the two genres in a playful manner. It conveys highly complex content in an emotional-esthetic way, and thereby shines a new light on pure molecular research: groundbreaking discoveries made at IMBA and published in prestigious journals are transformed into unique photo stories—which imbue the fundamental mechanisms of life with stories.

About the project

We defined 15 impactful publications in the history of IMBA that yielded novel insights and unexpected findings, some of them paving the way for novel medical treatments. For each of these publications, an artist-scientist-tandem was formed. The artists met with the researchers, who tried to convey their research in an easy to understand way.

This dialogue between the two disciplines laid the basis for the artistic realization of the “molecular mechanisms – in photography”. (Caroline Heider)

Students: Anahita Asadifar, Natalia Evelyn Bencicova, Živa Drvarič, Lisa Edi , Susanna Hofer , Dejan Ivkovic , Philip Tsetinis , Vrinda Jelinek , Julian Lee-Harather , Martina Lajczak , Simon Lehner , Marlene Mautner , Nadia Morozewicz , Philipp Orsini-Rosenberg, Alicia Pawelczak, Mariia Sizikova, Maša Stanić, Daniela Trost

“Looking Glass” is released by De Gruyter publishing house (Edition Angewandte) in November 2018.

Edited by Gerald Bast, Josef Penninger, Maria Ziegelböck, Caroline Heider, Ines Méhu-Blantar, Evelyn Devuyst.

Book Design Nik Thönen.