A Disenchanted Playroom, 2006

The children shown in this series are watching television. These portraits record the precise moment in which the children, between 3 and 12 years old, show absolutely no impulse or emotion. Engulfed, entranced, the children are no longer active individuals. Rather, they have become passive, fully abandoning themselves to the child-oriented programming playing on the television in front of them.

Installation View

Goethe-Zentrum, Asunción, Paraguay 2010

Desencantado/Entzaubert, Universidad de Concepción, Chile 2009 (Photo: Monserrat Rojas Corradi)

Entzaubert/Desencantado, Ministerio de las Culturas, Valparaíso, Chile 2009 (Photo: Monserrat Rojas Corradi)

About Face (with Edith Amituanai, John Lake, Virginia Woods-Jack), Enjoy Gallery Wellington, New Zealand 2008

Disenchanted, Starkwhite Gallery Aukland, New Zealand 2008

Entzaubert (Talents 07, Wolfram Hahn/Daniel Klemm), C|O-Berlin, Germany 2007 (Photo: Marc Volk)

Article/Review

“It is the dark side of the media world that Wolfram Hahn sensitively points out here, because television does not require viewers to actively engage with its content, but merely their undivided attention.” Ruth Schneeberger: Disenchanted worlds. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online, 23 Jan. 2012.

Jörg Colberg: Presenting Wolfram Hahn – C/O-Talents. In: Jörg Colberg, 25 Jul. 2011.

“In Hahn’s work, we are confronted with captively attentive, solitary children under the influence of the media.” Matthias Harder: Wolfram Hahn at C/O. In: Art in America, Oct. 2007.

“Hahn's work allows us to see what television means at three, six, and ten years old. His pictures should become as much a part of the public domain as the announcers and TV stars that are plastered everywhere: just like them, they depict the face of our time.” Andreas Kilb: Little starers. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 Jun. 2007.

“Culture has shaped children's brains ever since culture existed. Hahn’s photographs depict a central contemporary figure in this process as the closest stranger. It is becoming increasingly clear that young people are no longer only influenced by their families and schools, but also by far more powerful institutions. There is something creepy about this face of our time, because it doesn't look at you.” Gustav Seibt: The calm before the storm of images. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 5 Jun. 2007.