one room
from 23.05.2025 to 26.10.2025

Jan A. Staiger

A circle of 12 gold stars

Jan A. Staiger (born 1995) is a German documentary photographer, originally from Nuremberg and currently living in Brussels, where his work deals with the aesthetic and performative elements of top-level European politics, exploring the symbolic role played by flags, group photographs and “doorsteps” (short press conferences) in an image of the European Union shaped by the entertainment industry and the media.

The so-called European Quarter in Brussels is viewed by Staiger as the perfect green screen of the political imaginary. Over a period of two and a half years, he documented the translation of political narratives and ideologies into physical, spatial and thus visual terms against this backdrop. In his pictures, merchandise, youth events and visitors centres – decisive but often overlooked means of political communication – become significant props and spaces in a (specifically European) aesthetic of the political.

Staiger works with a mixture of documentary and staged photographs, revealing the construction underlying the image of European politics that finds its way into our collective visual memory.