PHOTOGRAPHER KATA GEIBL
Artist based in the Hague, currently in Budapest where she was born and raised.
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
I try to step away from photography in terms of inspiration because I believe it influences me too much. In my teenage years, I aspired to become a film director, but after working on a film set I quickly changed my mind and luckily found my way back to photography.
Movies are my greatest inspirations, most significantly the modernism of the 1960s and the postmodern era that followed. Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Alain Resnais, Wim Wenders, Fellini, classics that inspire me until this day. For example, Antonioni’s movie Blow-Up is one of the reasons I became a photographer.
Tell us a bit about your creative process and things you are looking forward to this year?
My creative process is very similar in all of my projects. I always envision the outcome first. What I want to achieve, how the images should look like, the concept that will glue them together. This process is probably what takes the most time. For instance, before I even start taking images I make a sketchbook where I collect all my ideas, make a moodboard, sketch out my images, make notes of what I read. After I am confident that what I want to say is also understandable for the public can the photographing start.
This year I am looking forward to finishing my long-term project which will take shape as a dummy and a small publication. And after that dive into a new project which is always very exciting!
How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the world changing moving forward?
This year had a huge impact on me as a person and with this also on my artistic practice. I finally had time to reflect on what I am doing and why I am doing it and most importantly for whom. Basically why I felt stuck in the past few years when everything seems to go perfectly regarding my “carrier”.
This realization was manifested in my Master's Thesis, which I just finished a couple of days ago. How artists, creators, photographers are stuck in the endless promises of exposure. Artists adapting to the conditions of market logic and trends, under the immense pressure of creating new work which quickly becomes commodities made for consumption with a short expiration date. In short how the marketization of art affects young artists and how it normalized competitive individualism as opposed to creating a strong community.
We are currently working on the design of this publication so that I can present an otherwise serious and controversial issue in a playful and easily digestible way.
Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?
Everyone who is working on the front lines to fight the pandemic.
Do you think the art world needs to change, and if so how can it be improved?
Definitely, it needs to change. It is very much unsustainable in the long term. The endless promises of exposure, the lowering of freelance rates, the standardizing of the exchange of free labor for visibility, normalizing competitive individualism. The everyday reality of creators, artists, and photographers; the entrepreneurs of culture.
But I am very hopeful because more and more people are speaking about these issues and I sincerely hope a change is coming.
Thank you for joining us today Kata. Follow this incredible talent here.
