Philautia means self-recognition and love towards oneself. It implies the reconciliation of what one is with one's own existence, and practicing it implies leaving aside self-pity.
Self-identity is a project in several phases where Hollstein strips naked to show the development of his self-love, channeling his personal evolution in a moment of vital crisis through images in a research and reaffirmation project. A declaration of principles in the reconciliation of two identities in conflict, inalienable and complementary where philautia struggles to prevail.
“The search of my own identity is a subject that has concerned me for a long time, and the time has come to document and hold this process has photographically. In 2011 I took on my artist´s name. It wasn´t an easy step. It was the result of an intensive confrontation of the essential of my own identity and my own self. The person the old name depicted, was not really me anymore. It was an imposed self.
Once I realized this, a process that took me a long time, I finally figured out that I really wanted to find my authentic me.
After many years focused on external identities, following the footsteps of this need to answer the questions that aroused from my quest, I started to conduct a series of photographic self-experiments trying to get to the core of all the questions I was asking myself and finding an answer.”
