Pears in the afternoon is a portrait series created between 2010 and 2018. Originally a fine artist, I swapped my brushes for a camera and my colours for photochemistry. That’s how the ‘paintings’ that I never painted emerged.

In wet plate photography, an old photographic process, I found a suitable medium to bring my images into being. Due to its very analogue nature, its distorting effects, its slow unfolding and its staging, the wet plate process comes very close to the process of painting. At the same time, I use the so-called objectivity of photography to develop my own artistic imagery.

I understood and accepted the fact that for me photography no longer means looking for pictures out there – the pictures come to me. It is no longer a search, but a creation. My artistic focus is on the portrait in the broadest sense: I’m always looking for the special quality of my subject, whether person, prop or situation. For me, it is never about the portrait of an individual, it’s about a portrait of the human being per se. My intention is to create images that confront the viewer with his or her own imagination.

About Karoline Schneider

Born in 1970, in Halle, East Germany, and a graduate from the University of Arts, Berlin and Film University, Babelsberg, Karoline began her working life as a graphic artist and animation filmmaker with the passion of photography. Throughout her career, Karoline has taught at art universities from1997 until today. More recently she curated in several galleries in Berlin.

Since 2008, Karoline has been intensively involved in photographic processes. Her experience storyboarding and filmmaking and her interest in complex visual narratives are manifest in her photography. In her most recent work, Karoline combines photographs with text and installations to further the complexity of the narrative. Her photographic series are recognised and exhibited internationally.Karoline lives and works in Berlin. [Official Website]