Stoffers, Harald
Germany, 1961
The letters of Harald Stoffers—part writing, part musical score, part pictorial composition—are of a rare intensity, inviting the viewer both to read them and to contemplate them in silent fascination. Stoffers was born in Hamburg in 1961. At the age of twenty-two he was committed to an adult psychiatric institution, where he began to write his letters on small pieces of paper that he handed out to the people around him. These brief messages eventually expanded into longer letters addressed to his “dear mummy”, where the words are placed on meticulously drawn lines reminiscent of musical staves, imbuing them with rhythm and musicality. Stoffers sometimes carefully tears his messages into thin strips that the reader then has to put back together.
