One of Us
One of Us is a photography series confronting the rise of fascist and nationalist ideologies in contemporary Germany. Initiated in 2025, the project visually investigates demonstrations, marches, and political gatherings organised by active far-right movements in Germany and the anti-fascist movements they provoke, as well as the contested public spaces they jointly occupy.
To document the far-right, Knowles must temporarily and uncomfortably coexist with them in a kind of collaboration. As Ariella Azoulay writes in The Civil Contract of Photography (2008), ‘Every photograph of others bears the traces of the meeting between the photographed persons and the photographer, neither of whom can, on their own, determine how this meeting will be inscribed in the photo.’ This idea emphasises not only the implicit collaboration between subject and photographer, but also a kind of co-authorship of the photographs. In the context of Germany’s far-right, this co-creation is underscored by the troubling interdependence between extremist political groups and the press - a relationship in which photography risks becoming a vehicle for fascist imagery even as it seeks to critically expose it.
The title of the series reflects Knowles’s complex position within far-right spaces. As a photographer, he is an observer. Simultaneously, his whiteness (and the presumption of German nationality it affords) allows him to move through and assimilate within political events underpinned by anti-migration rhetoric with relative anonymity, despite being an Ausländer (foreigner) himself. This ability to at times pass undetected within far-right spaces in Germany blurs the boundary between witness and participant, raising critical questions about the mechanisms of belonging that underpin nationalist ideologies. One can ask how extensively “belonging” to fascist groups is based on visual conformity - on looking the part and fitting in through dress codes, hairstyles, tattoos, and ethnicity - and, in turn, how fragile such structures can become when their codes of identification are either convincingly imitated or strategically subverted. This fragility is highlighted by two photographs from this series in particular. In each, the subject wears camouflage trousers. Yet, one is a far-right extremist while the other is an anti-war protester. Here, the conformity often associated with camouflage collapses, revealing the boundaries of inclusion both within far-right groups and the political movements that oppose them to be far less rigid than they may appear.
The interplay between observer and actor at the core of this series recalls Abigail Solomon-Godeau’s essay ‘Inside/Out’ (1994). Writing about the Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank’s The Americans, the landmark 1958 book depicting American culture from the perspective of an outsider, Solomon-Godeau concludes that ‘whether the stakes are the representation of one’s own culture (the painter of modern life), the critical reflection on reality, or the imagining of utopian alternatives, the outsider status of the artist is taken as the warranty for both the integrity and the acuity of artistic vision. Exteriority is accordingly the necessary condition of comprehension as well as critical reflection.’ Central to Solomon-Godeau’s critique is the question of how the insider/outsider binary shapes perceptions of truth. To what extent does the photographer’s relationship with their subject influence the truth value of their images? One of Us situates itself within this tension, asking how distance from, and proximity to, the far-right might condition both the photographer’s act of photographing and the viewer’s reception of what is shown.
One of Us will be featured in the forthcoming book Global Fascisms, published by HKW and Archive Books, to accompany the exhibition of the same title at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in September 2025.