ANDREA KISS ON HER MINIMAL STILL LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY, ITS SIGHT HARMONY AND HER DIARISTIC FOCUS

ANDREA KISS

Hi Andrea, tell us a bit about yourself and your working practice? 

After having finished my studies at MOME, I have examined various graphic techniques and paper-cutting. I prepared graphics on a cutted background.  For this creative period I have already used photo for examining the composition feature. These study-photos started a new life in 2013 as the base of my fine-art activity with  photo-technique. Although I am now working with camera I do not define myself as  photographer.  Photo seems to meet my expectations as a really very sensitve tool, it gives expression to my  ideas.

 

Your work has quite a gothic feel to it, is this something you strive for or a by product of the concepts your exploring?

Styles, genres, trends, schools  belong to the issues of my education.   In spite of my respect and admiration for really a lot of works, me myself have never ever made an effort to join to any of them. Art is my expression of individuality, no style or genre is able to realize my thoughts. A porcelain doll-head, a skull, a sandglass etc.  belong to me, they are the part of my world, they talk to me, they have a meaning for me. What I do is a kind of diary -  I present myself through the photos, I depict what my life makes.

The subject matter has got priority. A movement, a shadow, the novelty of a well-known object that I catch a sight. The quiet contemplacy, timeless and forceless.  I am supposed to be melancholic – if you feel so, it must be true in a certain measure, similar to other attributes or labels I am dedicated with.  However these labels reveal more about the approach of the viewer than me.

My photos are often characterised through their „sharpness” – I find this for a kind of praise. Fixed moments in still pictures shall awake certain narratives.  I do not decorate, not even record a tale. I do not explain my point of view, I allow myself the freedom to open the assotiation towards world of the viewer. Irony is important for me, in the original meaning of the ancient Greeks: distance. I keep distance, I play with my point of view.  As long a I am working on the photo, the photo is me and I am the entire moment on the photo. Then I leave them, let them approach others, they will start stories as many as many approaches are reflected. I invite  curiousity, offer my photos for fellow traveller on the road everyone might cover on its own. 

 

There’s a lot of different types of shots, but the use of women and flowers is something one would notice as a repeated motif - are you drawn to them for their aesthetic beauty or do they represent something more for you?

Nowdays I give my thoughts to the idea of minimal still life, flowers and self-portraits.  The objects  or the flowers are meaningful for me, not just the form or  the colour are inspiring, they  are individual identities with antropomorf character.   A self-portrait is rather practical concerning the creative process: I am always with me, there is no need to fix an appointment with models…  More important is the human body and face , the total control of time, space, composition , I mean  the double-presence and the double-existence. With introducing myself I would like to follow my own reactions to the impulses I find relevant for me. I retain the moment for my diary as a subject and object for the same time. I expose my environment, uncover my face and body, give a real intimate insight into my actual existence. Whoever will look at my photos can have a piece from my living entity. I have been preparig selfs for about a year, I am now exploring the possible creative frames.

 

The role of light and dark has quite a pronounced effect in your work, talk us through the process of creating such dynamic contrasts?

Well, it may be off-putting but I do not care mach about dark-light effects. For me the sight is important, the inner and outer sight must be in harmony. I do not mix my photos from particular elements, it is not like a soup-cooking, when the proper ingredients give a well-designed outcome and you can recognize what  in the dish is.  Main point is the very moment, that is unique and will never return. Lights can be natural, as they really are very often, without any artificial modification. If possible, I take several photos, I choose from among them. When I catch the sight I nearly always know what sort of technical caressing will additionally be needed.  When the photo is ready, light contrast are sometimes  really surprising for me, too.

 

I must say your work brings to mind for me old gothic novels like ‘The Turn of the Screw’, what would you say the biggest impacts and influences on your work have been?

My language is visuality. I am collecting visual inputs, I am in dialog with visual units. My eyes absorb impulses my memory saves and enshrines. I read a lot, too. I spent times for thinking over what I feel interesting or motivating for me. I can not mention a name or some names I have got impulses from – the list is endless. 

 

Your building quite body of work, whats next for you? Where should we be looking to see your work?

Facebook is a good media for testing my ideas, I am grateful for the inspirative comments. It helps me to step out into the art-scene – now I present my art-works on classically organized exhibitions . If I get an invitation for an exhibition I never send just a collection, I regard an event as a special genre, I do my best, that the  presentation give more than  the sum of the exhibited pieces. An ultimate intimity … the well-measured distance…  Later maybe I would like to get the images in my photos to move… as a possible way forward…

 

TO SEE MORE OF ANDREAS’ WORK VISIT www.andreakissartist.com

INTERVIEW by HANNAH SMITH