“Apoteosis Now” offers a striking visual constellation that resists linear storytelling. Unmoored from chronology and traditional narrative frameworks, the book forms a kind of Aleph—a space where fact, fiction, intuition, and symbolism coexist.Throughout her career, de Middel has used narrative as a tool to impose order on the chaos of the world, often constructing stories through documentary fiction and symbolic universes.

In “Apoteosis Now”, however, she deliberately shifts away from this approach. Narrative does not disappear, but it no longer serves as the central axis. Instead, the work responds to a contemporary condition of narrative saturation—an “everything at once” culture in which endless explanations risk emptying images of their power.

Each photograph exists autonomously, freed from sequence and explanation. A child sits quietly atop a donkey beside an older man in front of a crumbling building; a stack of charred pizza crusts rises precariously on a table; a lone steak rests under the soft light of an airplane window. These scenes hover between the ordinary and the surreal, between documentation and invention. Stripped of context, they encourage us to pause, linger, and attend more closely than we usually allow. Balancing irony and lucidity, a space is created where images can breathe, tensions surface, and meaning remains suspended — resisting a single, definitive narrative.