“Water is a mirror, it’s depth, projection screen, space, change – it is aesthetic, essential to life, socially relevant and highly political. We want to explore the relevance of water and your relationship to it (or that of others) through photography. What is significant about water to you? Does your work focus on personal or social themes? With the help of your pictures you can develop critical perspectives on socially controversial aspects of water. You can also create individual narratives about people by, in or on the water, or approach the topic poetically via your own story – across genres, freely and playfully. The aim is for you to find your own narrative style in the form of a photo essay. In parallel with identifying a theme, we will discuss questions of realization: What is the right narrative form? What technical means are required to convey your own idea? Examples from my own practice, as well as works by contemporary and historical photographers, will illustrate this. The focus during the seminar days will be on individual support throughout the artistic process and group discussion. The group process, which may also culminate in a collective exhibition featuring as diverse a range of perspectives as possible, is a central component of the seminar. The narrative style in my own photographic practice is fluid – ranging from documentary to experimental to abstract – and draws on various genres. It is precisely these transitions and the interplay with supposed reality that fascinate me about the versatile medium of photography.”
Julia Baier studied photography at the University of the Arts Bremen and works internationally as a photographer, artist and lecturer. For over 20 years, her artistic practice has explored the relationship between humans and water. With a keen sense of the medium’s possibilities, her narratives move between documentation and abstraction. Her visual language is characterised by precision, universality and poetry.