‘Everyone knows how it feels to be lonely': images for anxious times

The Guardian

08-05-2025

With a background in architecture, Klein creates immersive installations combining cinematic photography, video and murals to examine identity, solitude and performative behaviour in a hyper-connected world. 'My work explores topics of disconnection in everyday life, both within ourselves and with others. I also investigate the different scenarios or social practices that lead to the emotions created by this disconnection. I think in general my work has more questions than answers'
Klein began examining modern anxieties following her graduation from London's University of the Arts MA program in 2016. After London, she became restless, moving between Madrid, Israel, California and Mexico for one to two months at a time. Unmoored, her anxiety and depression began to grow. It wasn't just her, she realised – many of her friends, living all over the world, were experiencing the same extreme unease over the future
'For my projects, I try to draw inspiration from different backgrounds. I have a very strong academic influence thanks to thinkers such as Byung-Chul Han and Marc Augé. This gives me a strong structure to think about my projects in universal ways and to dig deeper into topics'
'I also come from a very political background in my family. My mom is a philosopher. We're always discussing philosophy and psychology. It's something that is very much part of my personality. I realised that, for the first time, I could try and mesh all my different interests together into one thing: photography. I started to explore different theories about contemporary society and human behaviour, working in my own theories and then finding a way to portray them in a psychological way. In the end, I realised that I'm really dealing with emotions'
'I would say there is always something ambiguous and absurd about the components of my visual language, not only for the stand-alone images, but the way the narrative between them is composed through fragments'
'My main character is always emotion. Emotion is universal and everyone understands emotions. It doesn't matter where you're from. You know how it feels to be anxious, you know how it feels to feel lonely'
In her Mercado de Sonora series, Klein turns her lens toward her native Mexico, exploring inherited beliefs and mystical rituals through the lens of her mother and grandmother. Against the backdrop of a chaotic market filled with esoteric remedies and trafficked animals, she stages intimate domestic scenes that expose the fraught interplay between faith, exploitation and the fragile hope for transcendence
Rich in colour and shadows, Klein's photographs grapple with isolation and melancholy in everyday life. In all of her work, Klein shows an interest in ambiguous spaces, characters and time
'In my work I bring a lot of influence from photographers such as Harry Gruyaert, Larry Sultan, William Eggleston, Jimmy De Sana, Stephen Shore, Nan Goldin and Jo Ann Callis'
'I also have a strong connection to multimedia – video artists whose work deeply inspired me, such as Tony Oursler, Bill Viola and Pipilotti Rist'