CAMERA DANCE

BRIGITTE AEBERHARD

// Brigitte is a Swiss photographer with a fascination for abstract photography. On her walks through the Swiss landscape and streets of her city, she discovers motifs guided primarily by colours, textures, and lines. Her abstract images provide just bare hints of the underlying motif.

Brigitte grew up in the Emmental region of Switzerland and now lives in a village near Solothurn. She has been intensively involved with photography for only a couple of years. The Solothurn Photo Club (Switzerland) gave her an ideal introduction to photography. She has attended courses at the School for Design in Bern, at the European Art Academy in Trier, at the Leica Academy Wetzlar, and at the Academy for Contemporary Art in Gaienhofen.

“The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”

William Thackeray

What draws you to the arts?

“For me, art is going away from everyday life, getting involved in the moment.”

What do you like best about abstract photography such as the images you have shared with us?

“I like it when everything in a picture is not recognizable at first glance, maybe nothing is recognizable at all. The viewer has to use his or her own imagination to complete the picture.“

Brigitte is fascinated by “Intentional Camera Movement” techniques, ICM for short. A longer exposure time and simultaneous, controlled camera movement results in unusual, sometimes very abstract photos. “Often it feels like dancing with the camera. I move in time with the motif,” says Brigitte.

“I’m not very picky about motifs. I take what is available at the moment. It is quite possible that I will first take a few landscape pictures on a walk in the vicinity, like in winter fields. A few steps further I may see pipes, containers or other colourful construction items at a construction business that hold appeal because of their colours. For example, my photos green and violet and blue way“.

In her abstract pictures, colours, lines or surfaces are more important to her than the motif itself. Sometimes she aims to show a completely different point of view of something totally profane. An examples of this is her photo “turquoise flow”, which is actually an abstraction of blue wool blankets. Most of the time these photos are taken in the daytime. “I prefer to take photos during the day, not too early 😉 and in good, warm weather, i.e. I’m more of a ‘nice-weather photographer’.” (We totally understand!)

When editing, Brigitte does not restrain herself. Using standard editing software, she may change the colours with the help of the white balance or stamp away unwanted elements. She also likes to use different textures, sometimes even several at the same time.

We think Brigitte´s transformation of everyday items into these colourful abstract patterns is inspirational – something to try out perhaps?

(Enlarge the images below to see them with their titles.)

Click on the photos to see a larger image. Some images may be cropped for layout.