Exchange application LCC Photography
Annika Toyah Bode

I don’t aim to document
things as they are.
I want to invite people to dream
of how it could be.

My photographic practice
has led me to make up a situation first,
make people come together
in new constellations,
stylize the ordinary,
pretend to be in a world
that allows us to be soft and free.

I experience the present to be both
i s o l a t i n g and loud.
It has become hard to hear each other.
It has become hard to see ourselves.

I see my work as a reminder
to see and listen and feel with care,
collectively and on our own.

DISCOmfortable

DISCOmfortable consists of portraits taken
of queer couples and individuals
from the Ruhr district, Germany
and London, England.
Everyone is both portrayed in spaces of safety and
places of discomfort.
All participants became a part of this series
through an open call.
We met at places of their choice,
forests, clubs, bedrooms.

Later on, I asked each of them to write about
the places where they hadbeen photographed.
I wanted to highlight the different associations
linked to the places we,
queer people, are moving through day to day.
We deserve to feel safe.
We deserve to be safe.
In December 2023 I got to exhibit 31
of the photographs and a video work
made of the written statements in Bochum, Germany.

George about why they chose to be photographed in a forest

Exhibition floorplan

Videowork about the different photo destinations

Pauline in bed

Why have we stopped playing?
Engaging with the world through photography asks me to be playful, even as a young adult. I see a hopeful, healing quality within that play and I want others to feel that too.
I have initiated many shootings throughout the past months that were focused on experimenting together, there were no plans, no mood boards, no expectations.
I often ask people to bring friends or invite more participants to the set.
I am not sure what this series is developing into and that is the beauty of it.
Working on THE PLAYTIME BLUES has shown me the power of spontaneous connections, openness and shared joy over and over again.
You could dismiss this way of working as childish or simple, but during playtime we are very serious about our fun.
For now, most of the people I experienced these shootings with were within my age group.
However, I have been feeling a big urge to also grasp playful scenes among different denerations.
We seem to mostly engage with each other in conflict, but there is so much more to share between the ages.

THE PLAYTIME
BLUES

This series is still in progress,
once the shootings are done, I want to think of interactive ways of presenting the images to an audience.
I´m planning on printing in big scale on thin paper and hanging them in a dark space,
for the images to become visible from both sides, visitors would shine through them with torches.
I want the expierence of looking at this work fo feel as close as possible to the experience of making it.

Playing on a construction site with Emma

Everyone brought another person, we shared clothes and dreamt of fairytales.
First Playtime Blues shooting, September 2025

Playing at home with Birte

Playing on a farm with Julia and Emily

Playing with a group of theatre students,
people that learn to play for a living.

I am inspired by children making up new stories, pretending to be someone else, somewhere else for hours, then going home to have dinner.
During PLAYTIME we don’t limit, we don’t judge, we feel, experiment and enjoy!

MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHY What the room looked like while a sound was made
What the room looked like while a sound was made
What the room looked like while a sound was made and everyone listened
and everyone listened
and everyone listened

European Vampire in Paris

French Toast in Maastricht

European Vampire in Berlin

In the past three years I have often collaborated with musicians,
creating the visual worlds that accompany and influence the perception of their auditive work.
This has been a consistent part of my creative practice.
Working together with artists of various disciplines can add so much to each individual practice.

MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE

The people and art I have engaged with through music photography have taken me on many journeys all over Europe.
I was deeply inspired by sounds from various places, I wanted to connect them, I wanted to make the bands I worked with meet and play together.

This year I organised two festivals that gave a stage to share between many artists I met along the way.
In my eyes, this is the true power of photography, to connect people beyond the image.
Taking photos of these two events has closed a big circle within my work.
When I started photographing live music, I knew nothing about cameras, I learned during each show through curiousity, intuition and trust.
Meet me in the Middle was the exact same, I had no experience as a booker, promoter or organiser; but I had a lot of passion and imagination.

In addition to making my own art, I feel an urgency
to create spaces for people to come together.

Early travel cost calculations

Radio show notes
Meet me in the Middle now has its own radio show in which I talk to all acts that played at my previous events, the show is broadcast in the Netherlands.

Promotion material for
MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE
February and June 2026

Friend,

TAKING PHOTOS OF FRIENDS THAT I DON´T KNOW

No matter how often I go to Paris,
I always feel like a stranger in the city.
So this is where I start a series about friendship.
I take portraits of friends that I am a stranger to.
I know nothing about their relationship
until I start capturing it.

I only get to know them as who they are
in each other’s presence.

Stranger

Open call
shared online
and on the streets of Paris
March 2026

The creation of this series feels less like making it
and more like meeting it.
I’ve had to let go from wanting to control the images
and learn to let them speak to
and through me.

I meet

Maud and
Saul...

outside Saul’s apartment , we go upstairs, they make each other’s hair, sit on the floor, they update each other on the latest happenings in French, the sun starts to set and they lay down on Saul’s bed, they playfight and cuddle, their friendship is soft and physical.
I am a stranger to their dynamic, their language and the room.
Later we go out on the streets, I ask about their shared memories, but I mostly interact with them through my camera. I take notes, observe, capture.
I don’t leave as a stranger.

I meet

Henriette and
Romane...

in a park, they want to tell me about their friendship before I unpack my camera, we sit in the grass and I listen to them remembering the timeline of their bond. As we feel ready, I capture them laying in the sun, talking, dancing and rehearsing for a theatre production they will both star in. We decide to stage some pictures and my position changes, I no longer document their day, I am an active part of it.
There is a new experience added to their friendship and it includes me. For a second I feel as if I failed my attempt to document a relationship by stepping in and intruding into the situation. As we keep going, I realise that I did the right thing, as their friendship consists of moments they are being directed through.
By making them pose, I capture them in a condition that lies within the nature of who they are together.

‘Friend, Friend, Stranger’ first shown at ‘Letters to a friend’ group exhibition organised by Annika Toyah Bode and Pien Witte, Summer 2026 Arnhem, The Netherlands.

I left Paris with hundreds of photos on my card, I didn`t want to touch them yet,
I wanted to continue shooting and let more friends with all sorts of different experiences be a part of this narration.
.
But I found that there was a depth within the images that didn’t ask for more.

I looked through my files in search of the strongest images .
As I was printing what I thought was the full series, something seemed wrong.

I realised that this time it was not my job to decide on what photographs were worthy of a big print.
I printed everything, the complete shootings.
It felt radical and right.
These friendships were portrayed through the whole time we had spent together, starting as complete strangers.

Their dynamics live through continuity and the amount of memories they share.
My choice of images would have been an unfinished representation.

All images were printed in the same size and placed chronologically,
visitors were encouraged to walk throgh them.

There is no hierarchy within shared moments.
They all matter as one.