Harmonices Mundi – 2000 - 2008

Looking at Karin Hillmer’s photographs will require you to slow down and look closer. Take your time. Relax. These photographs can speak to you, if you let them, for each image is a story in itself.

Tim Anderson, Publisher/Editor of Camera Arts Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007. 

The process of creation represents a journey, a journey into my mind that can take me across different states in life and all the way back to childhood. Symbols which were created along the path of life, return in the form of objects, paper fragments, colors or words to populate my images. Events that impressed or intrigued me are taken up again and are explored in new ways. It may be that this kind of seeing, when looking through the camera, revives those thoughts and feelings that came quite naturally to us in childhood. Then the thing we were playing with was experienced truly as itself; it was fresh and new, seen for the very first time. This aspect adds airiness and playfulness to my work, which at best can be witty. 

With an idea in mind, the objects are moved about in front of the camera. They are juxtaposed with other visual elements to form a collaged still life of a dream, a memory or a thought that is foremost on my mind. These conceived images evolve within a field of polarities, a field of tension, where and active shape plays the same important role as the passive space surrounding it. I explore opposite forces through reality and illusion, light and shade, pictorial depth and flat surfaces, an inter-play of complementary and opposing colors, the painterly aspect versus photography. These opposing forces dramatize the energy streaming forth from the image and it becomes a much deeper experience. I invite you, the viewer, to engage into a dialogue between you and my photographs, to explore this journey and to find your own persona, experience along the way.

©Karin Hillmer, 2008