Imaginary club The universe of Oliver Sieber explores the counterculture of social groups, mostly young, who frequent clubs where musical groups with an assertive style perform. Of this subculture, which is experienced on a global scale, we today know the visual form developed by its own members and which circulates mainly through social networks. The whole intelligence of Oliver Sieber's project is to construct, going against these dominant photographic practices, a work of great aesthetic and documentary rigor. To draw the portrait of these multiple “globalized urban tribes”, he borrowed from various photographic styles: from the studio to a form of still life via a journal, a sort of photographic wandering. Sociological or anthropological, his approach owes a lot to his immersion within this counter-culture which, without directly opposing the dominant culture, develops a singular aesthetic through its own codes and rituals. In rigorously framed views, Oliver Sieber explored the “amateur” recording studios where many groups self-produce on the edge of the official major circuit; in a studio that he installed in front of the doors of the concert halls, he produced a large series of color portraits, halfway between an American shot and a close-up; and, finally, he wandered through the great metropolises he passed through to capture their atmospheres in the moment, in black and white. From this intermingling of images emerges a complex, confusing universe, where, paradoxically, the attestation of singularity coexists with the herd instinct. This affirmation of individuality occurs, undoubtedly unconsciously, through practices that date back to the dawn of time – tattooing, piercing, scarification or multiple ways of wearing hairstyles – and are generally associated in our Western societies with so-called “primitive” practices. Beyond its photographic quality, Oliver Sieber's work questions the function of representation at work in our contemporary societies, inclined to normalize our ways of appearing in social space.