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Kevin Krautgartner
Kevin Krautgartner (born 1988) is a German architectural and landscape photographer, best known for his aerial images of urban and large ground spaces highlighting the aesthetic value of colours, lines and geometric patterns in them. His oeuvre has been awarded at international contests, and featured in mainstream media.
Michéla Griffith
In 2012 I paused by my local river and everything changed. I’ve moved away from what many expect photographs to be: my images deconstruct the literal and reimagine the subjective, reflecting the curiosity that water has inspired in my practice. Water has been my conduit: it has sharpened my vision, given me permission to experiment and continues to introduce me to new ways of seeing.
It’s easy to think of abstracts as something small, a landscape within, but really it’s a question of scale. All that is needed is to remove the reference, the visual clues that help us to decipher that which we look at. For the ultimate in abstracts, take to the air. From the glacial rivers in Iceland that we have become familiar with to the landscapes of Australia, Kevin Krautgartner’s images show that there is plenty to find and enjoy at a larger scale. Some we can easily recognise, some are less obvious. The forces of nature and of man mix and beguile the viewer, even when the subject is the use and despoliation of our planet.
Would you like to start by telling readers a little about yourself – where you grew up, your education and early interests, and what that led you to do as a career?
I grew up in a small town near Wuppertal in the western part of Germany. Already during my school years, I photographed with old cameras from my grandparents in the forest (at that time still analogue) and discovered my passion for photography. Photography was quickly joined by an interest in graphic design. So I focused more on these two areas in my professional career. After school, I started studying communication design with a focus on photography. During this time I created my first professional works and at the same time, I started my own business. Throughout my education, I still developed my analogue work in the darkroom. I miss that a little bit because I always found it super exciting to do the whole process by myself and to learn some background knowledge. I was fascinated by everything that has to do with photography, so in the beginning, I worked both in the studio and outdoors.
When you first became interested in photography, what kind of images did you want to make and what ambitions did you have?