For his piece HEDONISM MAX photographer Gerhard Hintermann found himself caught between abject distance and an urge for close documentation, catching a glimpse of the sexual ritualisation of a turbocapitalist society. 

The work shows its strengths in autoerotic gestures of intravenous microagression as the figures twist in on themselves focusing on a singular point, poised full of expectation and concentration, drawing the viewer in. In these moments the models/users are devoid of individuality yet reveal themselves fully to the camera. 

This work attempts to illustrate a new breed of substance abuse – a sexualized, private consummation, enabling unconditional functionality in a desperate attempt to conform to a turbocapitalist, achievement-oriented society. A practice which through its focus on pseudo-social individualized pleasure appears wildly different to the public consumption of the past decades, such as the drug scene of the Needlepark at the Blattspitz Zürich.

A portrait of contemporary fetishized drug use between methamphetamin and steroids, sexual rituals, compulsion and obsession. 

Text: Christoph Studer-Harper