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"In the works of Tobias ZIELONY, the self-staging of the protagonists plays an important role in the image-making, as in the out-of-print photo book 'Trona. Armpit of America'. Through the intensive contact, often lasting several months, between the artist and the people he portrays, relationships develop that take away the people's shyness and reticence in front of the camera. The confidence and self-confidence to move in front of his camera leads to a self-chosen staging of the people, an aspect that not least determines the tension of the works. The gestures and poses with which many of the young people present themselves are based on images of gang and counter-culture conveyed by the media, and are therefore neither to be understood as authentic self-positioning nor as a reference to individual character traits of a quality of photography that is constantly being sought. The deliberate self-staging in front of the camera, which can be understood here almost as an ethnographically motivated recording of various adaptation patterns of the most diverse youth cultures, refers to social standardizations to which the young people present here are subjected. They reflect themselves, their social environment and at the same time the subliminal influences of youth cultures conveyed by the mass media." (© Spector, 2008)