Claudia Holzinger

The fashion editorial, presented in the form of a comic strip, was created in collaboration with Claudia Holzinger (photography), Alessandro Santi (fashion design), and Dalmonia Rognean (photographic assistant). At the center of the 52-part series of images and text is a character whose identity is built up in five layers, much like an onion: Safety, Background, Sabrina, Miranda, and Vampire. The five layers of the character reveal different social and personal facets and define identity as a multilayered, process-oriented construct shaped by social norms that can simultaneously serve as a protective mechanism. Fashion, makeup, and staging extend the body and its appearance and challenge the notion of an unchanging identity. Through the character’s five layers of personality, identity is described as an accumulation that becomes more stable and complex with every change and every layer. This creates an interplay between inner vulnerability and external pressure, in which the surface both conceals and reveals.

Biography

Claudia Holzinger, b. 1985 in Vilsbiburg (DE); lives and works in Buchbach (DE) and Vienna (AT). Holzinger studied graphic design and photography at the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she has been working as an assistant in the Applied Photography and Time-Based Media department since 2022. Among other honors, she has received the Bavarian Art Promotion Award (2018), the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts’ U.S. scholarship (2023), and the Studio Award from the Bavarian State Association of Fine Artists (BBK) and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts (2025).