Diamonds against Stones
Marge Monko/Thomas Seelig

Marge Monko’s work revolves around the role models society offers to women and men, using her own photographs coupled, above all, with found pictures from the world of advertising that she appropriates and re-contextualizes. She explores how things have been presented in applied and essayistic photography and looks at how these pictures can be read today. Her large-scale installations reveal the rhetoric of wishes and desires that create this imagery. In her most recent group of works “Woman of the World – Raise Your Right Hand” she examines the successful campaign run by the british diamond trading company De Beers, which in the early 2000s focused on the independent and self-reliant woman as a new target group for its luxury brand. This wide-ranging publication is the first book to provide an overview of the creative origins of one of the most fascinating positions in Estonian contemporary photography. The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition presented at the Museum Folkwang, Essen from 22 February to 5 May 2019.