KATHRIN LINKERSDORFF (born 1966, Berlin) trained as an architect. Influenced by extensive travelling and working in Japan she became fascinated by traditional Japanese culture. She went on to study Japanese ink wash painting and the aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi with its appreciation of beauty in nature that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. She completed her studies in photography at the Schule für Fotografie am Schiffsbauerdam in Berlin with Robert Lyons in 2006-2007.
Using the medium of photography, Kathrin Linkersdorff translates the concept of wabi-sabi into pictures. Each image is an encounter with a particular object at a particular time, which takes weeks and months of intimate observation to find. Extensive research, lively exchange with scientists and patient experimenting has helped her to discover a way of depicting the inner architecture of living objects.
Her latest series, Fairies I-VI, represents the result of years of experimentation and testing: capturing fading moments of transience with the lightest possible touch. The practice of biological methodology has turned her studio into a laboratory. Colours are extracted from the plants, and, at the same time, she creates coloured liquids based on the concentrated, water-soluble plant pigments, anthocyanins. These extracted colours are carefully reintroduced to the faded plant tissues and given space to again unfurl. The interaction between colour and form becomes a poetic dance that also reveals the hidden alchemy present in all living matter.
