Biography 020
Christiane Fichtner - Biography
Christiane was born in 1974 in Alsfeld, where she grows up together with her
brother, who is six years older, in a middle class family. Nothing spectacular
occurs during her childhood and teenage years.
After she finishes secondary school, she trains to become a make-up artist
in Cologne.
A young colleague produces an art project for her application to an art school.
The title of the project is “Zwillingsschwestern!“ (Twin Sisters).
Christiane is there for the show and sees the two almost identical girls up
on the catwalk. This leaves quite an impression on her.
She can’t stop thinking about it, until she finally meets Rahel. They
look very much alike. They do a lot together and especially go out at night
often. When Christiane is with Rahel, she feels acknowledged and her shyness
all but disappears.
But Rahel feels estranged by Christiane’s need to identify herself with
her and avoids her after a while.
Christiane starts looking for new doppelgangers.
She finds increasingly different looking people and transforms them into her
twin sisters with the help of her make-up skills. Then she takes their picture,
and they go out together. In her ongoing search for a new extension of her
own self, her wanting starts to take on its own dynamics.
She starts working as an artist with a fair deal of success, exhibiting the
photographs of her doppelgangers under the name of Christiane Fichtner. She
does not disclose the true identity of the people in her photographs, however.
Almost everyone believes that the photographs are of her.
In watching this fiction, she realizes that when two people look exactly alike,
the viewer will look for differences between them, which is what she felt
when she first saw the twin sisters on the catwalk. If the resemblance is
not so remarkable, however, the viewer starts to look for similarities and
finds pleasure in the tension.
At one of Christiane’s exhibitions, a woman recognizes herself in one
of the pictures and takes legal action against Christiane. The court orders
for Christiane to be examined by a psychologist.
During one of our sessions, she asks me to make her real life story public.
Contrary to my professional ethics, and as a private individual (not as a
psychologist), I say yes.
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