Bettina Koller

Photographer

Bettina Koller born 1966 is a German photographer whose images range from portrait photography to landscape and still life. All these genres are combined in form of open series. After dropping out of school followed by various part-time jobs, she started to deal with photography for the first time at the end of the 1980s. She made up for her school-leaving qualifications and gave birth to her daughter in the same year. After basic studies at Freie Kunstwerkstatt Munich, she decided to study photography. At Staatliche Fachakademie für Fotodesign she began to experiment with various photographic processes and materials which is still an essential part of her artistic practice today. Mistakes and the non-perfect are intentional and part of her aesthetic decisions, which are influenced by the philosophical concept wabi-sabi. After her graduation in 1996, her photographs have been published in magazines such as Die Zeit and brandeins and she has participated in solo and group shows including Lothringer13, Munich and BelleVue, Basel. With the birth of her second child in 2002, the autobiographical element began to play an increasingly important role. Necessarily she focused on her immediate surrounding and everyday life. From 2006 to 2014 she was also involved in cyan, an artist-run space in Munich. In the last years, she has more and more addressed aspects of identity within the fundamental cycles of life. The artist lives and works in Munich.