Mona Kuhn | Evidence

I’m interested in working with the body as an element of culture not so much as a gender element.

-Mona Kuhn

I do like color and black and white and I do them together. And I also think that I would not want to do just color because I like the depth of black and white. So just color might be, even if it’s fluid, even if you see the art in it, it still might just be a little too candy-like. It’s very seductive and I like playing with it but I do like the depth of black and white.

-Mona Kuhn

I shoot as I see things happening. Basically, I create a situation, I have a place where people come and spend time with me. And when I think that certain magic is happening, when life and art becomes one, then I start photographing. It might take half an hour, it might take two hours, depends on the mood. So it’s a little bit of creating an environment for two months during the summer, all of that is happening, everyone is feeling welcome and they know we’re there to work on creative projects. But I’m not really scheduling a shoot.

-Mona Kuhn

Some of my work looks so intimate because we are opening up to each other and working together.

-Mona Kuhn

[My use of selective focus and shallow depth of field] is a way for me to abstract a little bit the nude so it’s not so much of a recording or a proof that I have encountered someone naked yesterday and I’m telling the world. So it’s a way of making it a little bit more magical, a little bit more about a memory of a time that was spent together. It’s a way of abstracting the body.

-Mona Kuhn

I am a figurative artist so I’m working with people that I know and I’m working with photographing the human in the people that I know.

-Mona Kuhn

I’m just recognizing as the day goes by and I see maybe someone sitting on a stool and I say, wow, this looks fantastic just stay there. Or I might see some friends that are hanging out and laying in the sun and I say you know what I’m just going to go around with the camera and see what I can compose or what I can do here.

-Mona Kuhn

Since I work with people it all depends so much on their mood and what’s happening and the light and the relationships….I don’t know exactly what will come out. It’s a very organic way of working.

-Mona Kuhn

I use a Hasselblad, I don’t use a tripod, I have the camera out at all times so in a way it becomes a transparent thing. That’s what I like most about the technique is when it becomes translucent.

-Mona Kuhn

Because I have the square format, and that’s also very much part of my work, how do you put within a square format, the rigidity of the square, how do you put bodies in a way that shows relationships? That’s one of those little challenges that I enjoy when I am photographing.

-Mona Kuhn

I need to spend time with people and I need to see how I start imagining them in the images.

-Mona Kuhn