Overview participating exhibitions
Arena
2016
Arena
Katrin Koenning
Katrin Koenning
In her work in progress THE CROSSING, Katrin Koenning focuses on the ‘wounded’ Australian ecology, in which man’s impact is plainly gouged out in everything we have touched: land, water and sky. The series reflects on nature in the Anthropocene – the geological era in which the climate and atmosphere are subjected to the effects of human activity. As a result, nature finds itself in various states of disappearance, adaptation and change.
Pulse
2015
Pulse
Katrin Koenning
Glow (2013-present)
Faces, body parts, and everyday objects reflect a bright, ghostly light against a dark background – in GLOW, Katrin Koenning focuses on that which would normally only have a momentary glow, or none at all. In her black and white photographs it is often not visible what reflects the light. This play with light underlines the transient nature of the world around us, and the ways in which we can look at it. “We see only what we want to see,” says Koenning. “If we liberate our gaze on the world, both physically and in the metaphorical sense, everything changes.”
Metropolis
2011
Metropolis
Katrin Koenning
THIRTEEN: TWENTY LACUNA (Australia, 2009-2011)
The photographer Katrin Koenning is fascinated by the hustle and bustle of the big city. What happens there with strangers who packed together in the same busy public spaces? In Melbourne she found an alley where the sunlight only penetrates for twenty minutes a day, around lunchtime. People rush past, on their way for coffee and a sandwich. During those brief minutes everything that is so ordinary briefly becomes special. A conversation, a face, a detail, the muffled sound of an iPod. Who are these people? What are their stories?
Biography
In her photographs, Katrin Koenning (West Germany, 1978) examines the extraordinary in the ordinary. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, GUP Magazine and Der Spiegel. In 2011, she was proclaimed Australia’s Top Emerging Documentary Photographer. Koenning teaches at the Photography Studies College in Melbourne, Australia, where she also lives.