The numerous closures of public outdoor pools, give rise to public discussion in many places. The spacious outdoor pool areas are being reduced to centrally located, mostly smaller and comparatively high-priced fun pools.
Against the background of the bathing culture, which has its origins in antiquity and has been an expression of the sophistication of a society in all cultures up to the present day, the question arises as to whether the tendency towards a fun bathing society, whose focus has long since changed from the sporting idea of the former "Trimm dich" wave to more expensive and clearly more passive water entertainment, is not programmatic for what can be observed in our society as a whole.
In my work "Freischwimmer" I am particularly concerned with the collective experience of the generation of open-air pool visitors in the heyday of German open-air pool culture, the 1970s and 1980s.
The aspect of memory, as well as the identity-forming function of the collectively experienced leisure pleasure are in the foreground. I am interested in seeing the open-air swimming pool as a place of social and personal imprinting, a cosmos of its own in which codes of behavior and disciplines are experienced and learned.
Against the background of my own experiences, I asked people from my generation for their memories. I picked out seven stories from different ages between 5 and 15 years and tell with them also the story of growing up. The photo series shows stagings, each of which refers to a specific memory. But only the title of the picture gives a reference to what actually happened. The empty and unreal backdrop leaves room for the viewer's projections.

Image title: "In the evening I had a sunburn" (Jutta, 12)