Anna-Tia Buss

● Nominees 2022

○● Anna-Tia Buss (1993). I am a Swiss and German photographer based in Zurich and Geneva. In my artistic practice, I question the feeling of belonging, identity, the experience of being a woman in our society and the relationships with the spaces around us. My projects are mainly photographically based, with touches of multimedia. In several of my works, I explore a collaborative approach, inviting the participants to get involved in creating the pieces.

 Zürich/Genf, Schweiz
 Website

Pomegranates grow in winter Kyrgyzstan 2018 – 2019. © Anna-Tia Buss

Pomegranates grow in winter Kyrgyzstan 2018 - 2019. © Anna-Tia Buss

I never realized Various countries 2018-2022. © Anna-Tia Buss

Dineo, 28 - South Africa. I have body dysmorphia, it is strange. My close friends, family, and my husband tell me “you’re ﬁne you have a normal body” but I don’t see that myself. I am very tall and slender, with no hips, just a very straight shape. I was very active when I was younger, and that conditioned my body a lot. As a teenager I went to boarding school, then when I went home after three months, everybody said that I had gained weight. Those comments weren’t meant in a bad way, but in my head they were. I then tried to get my old body back, even though it was also puberty that was making me change, but I wasn’t aware of it back then. I started to skip meals I once fainted and was hospitalized. Later at university, someone suggested I should try modelling. An agency took me and told me I need to lose weight around the hips. Now I realize it’s impossible as it was my bone. Currently, I’m in a body-positive phase, but then one thing can happen and I question it again. I don’t force myself to work out, I do it when I want and the same for food. When I have some bad thoughts, I try to ignore them but it’s not so easy. But I am reminded of it in simple moments like when you put on a pair of jeans and they are too tight suddenly. © Anna-Tia Buss

Jorunn, 48 – Iceland. When I had my ﬁrst child I was nineteen it all went well, I was in my jeans the next week and I was healthy. Then I got pregnant again at 27 and for the last 3 months I blew up from 100 pounds to close to 200 pounds. In 3 months my body just gave the fuck up. It would not do anything I wanted it to do. The pregnancy shattered my abdominal muscles. From being a totally healthy, sexy, capable, still a bit confused but sassy mother of one, to a wreck of a woman, mother of two. Yeah, that’s my body. I can’t handle how people look at me and say you’re pretty but you’re a little fat you know, you should take care of that. I don’t have a problem with being fat. When I was thin every little gram made me worried but being overweight is ﬁne. Being incapable and inﬂexible and the pain that I generate just by doing ordinary things, that’s what bothers me. But nobody can do anything about it except me. © Anna-Tia Buss