IPFL 2015

“It is”

It could have been possible. It would have been. It is.

This project is a reflection upon vulnerability, imperfection, the search for meaning, for sense. 

About the ability to adapt – and the loss of it.

The whole project consists of three photographic themes, presented in a photographic installation: interiors of a sunlit and worn-out living room, capturing a sense of loneliness and the excruciating slow passage of time; screenshots from an annoyingly bright television, and studio-stills from beautifully-crafted, small sculptures, which were made many years ago. 

Each visual component shows another aspect of a human life: the life of an elderly man.

Artist Statement

In her work Katharina Pöhlmann focuses on facets of human lives: imperfect, vulnerable and sometimes contradictory; the confrontation with the limits of life, with loneliness, with the passage of time. What remains after a person has left? What becomes visible in the emptiness?

Encountering people and their environments makes her more aware of her questions about universal themes.

Working with an analogue medium-format camera gives Katharina the opportunity to slow down the photographic process. The time needed to arrive at an image is transformed into a sense of time in the photograph.

Biografie

Katharina Pöhlmann (1969 Erlangen, Germany) is a photographer and visual artist. 

Before she started working in photography she studied choreography, performance- and visual-arts at the Academy of Arts Amsterdam and specialized further in audiovisual media. She became a teacher in video-composition and audiovisual media at the Academy of Arts Amsterdam and worked many years as camera-operator and Director of Photography for television and film.

In 2008, she started studying photography at the Photo-Academy Amsterdam and graduated in June 2011. Since then she has worked on her own photography projects both in the Netherlands and abroad and exhibits frequently. She has also been nominated for several awards and prizes.