Cristina Piza
London Sunday Best

Exhibition:
November 15 to December 14, 2003
(photogalerie 94)

Opening:
Saturday, November 15, 2003, 6pm
Introduction by Sascha Laue

Finissage:
Sunday, December 14, 2003, 2 - 5pm

London Sunday Best
People who go for a walk on Sundays always dress up nicely. That's why generations of children have been so afraid of it. Because they had to march through the woods for hours without getting their pretty clothes dirty. The writer Alexa Hennig von Lange, for example, used to cling to the banister when she was young if she had to go for another walk. Her mother would then lure the little girl outside with chocolate—and stories. Today, now a mother herself, she enjoys going for walks every day in Berlin. And yet the Sunday walk still has something special for her: because the atmosphere is completely different, people feel freer.

Not everywhere do people dress up as smartly on Sundays as they do in Italy, where they stroll arm in arm after lunch, wearing their finest clothes. In London, everyone wears what they like. Today, photographer Cristina Piza has observed, the significant difference is not between Wednesday and Sunday clothing, but between what people wear at home and what they wear on the street. Today, everyone decides for themselves what their Sunday clothes are. In the past, you had to meet certain standards. Everyone wears what suits their mood, political convictions, and ethnic background. Clothing as a means of communication: this is who I am, this is where I belong.

Photographer Cristina Piza, born in Costa Rica in 1963, lived in London for many years and, until recently, in Berlin. Since August, she has been living in San Francisco and pursuing a master's degree at the San Francisco Art Institute, equipped with both a fellowship and a Fulbright scholarship. Three years ago, she began photographing people in their Sunday best in the British capital. She was fascinated by the richness of their expression. "In a city made up of so many different cultures, I was curious to see how the various groups expressed their identity through clothing."

Whether in posh Hampstead or Indian-influenced South Hall, she approached people on the street everywhere. "People who I notice make an effort with their clothes, who think they look nice." They are as proud as children in their Sunday best, which is so well suited to a stroll. And strolling, as the flâneur Franz Hessel noted, "is neither useful nor hygienic; it is exuberance. Walking and letting yourself go, a child's frenzy and blissful floating."