Biography
Artist Steffi Pusch (born 1965) currently resides in England and has been a photographer since her youth. She began taking photographs at the zoo in her hometown of Zschopau and later added portraits and documentary photography to her practice. Aside from her profession as a pediatric nurse, she also spends an intensive amount of time with the handcrafted aspect of photographic production. She has attended a number of classes with an emphasis on black-and-white photography and has picked up the historical printing technique of processing platinum and palladium prints. Today it is a given that her experimentation with different cameras includes toy, pinhole, and medium format cameras, which parallels how the contents of her images have slipped into experimental landscapes and still lifes.
With her camera, she primarily savors and investigates the beauty of South East England’s moorlands and coastal scenery. This results in finely-woven black and white photographs often saturated with the type of shimmering sunlight that was so treasured by Impressionists. When Pusch photographs indoors, the carefully composed images are full of silence and lightness. Among her most beautiful works are color photographs of English landscapes embedded with country houses; one that served as a subject is the Bateman House, the former home of “The Jungle Book” author Rudyard Kipling. In these images, the artist experimented with multiple exposures and landscape perspectives that practically push up against each other to the point of overlapping. Visual ciphers of trees, hedges, paths, and country houses have come into being, finding each other in an indifferent spacial structure and seemingly increase the excessive richness of light, color, and scents.
Steffi Pusch’s sensitive and sensual landscape photography has been met with great international response. The artist has already held several exhibitions in Germany, England, and Spain. In 2012 she succeeded in producing an artist’s book, “The Swimmer,” with poet SJ Butler
Curriculum Vitae
| 1965 | born in Zschopau, Saxony, Germany |
| 1984–1988 | Training as a Paediatric Nurse in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt |
| 1992–1999 | Theatre, Film and Television Studies, German Language and History of Art in Heidelberg and Cologne |
| 1999–2004 | Journalistic experiences in documentaries, radio and printing. |
| 2002–2008 | Lecturer in Media Studies: film theory workshops for children, young adults and teachers. |
| 2008 | Relocation from Cologne to East Sussex, continuation of the lecturing activities in Germany alongside work at a biodynamic farm in England |
| 2009– | Committee member of the Forest Row Film Society (programming, mobile projections, film festival) |
| Steffi Pusch lives and works in Cologne, Germany, and Crowborough, East Sussex, UK | |
Exhibitions – Selection (S = Solo show, D = Double show, G = Group exhibition) |
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| 2012–2013 | “All Things Consiedered” (G), Knight Webb Gallery, London |
| 2012 | Fashion and Fine Art Event (G), Dryland Business Member’s Club, London |
| “The Swimmer” (S) including the first presentation of the homonymous artist book, Ashdown Gallery, Forest Row, UK | |
| 2010 | Festival Exhibition (G), Crowborough, United Kingdom |
| “Venice Pinhole” (S), Casa de Arte, Santanij, Spain | |
| “5 Years Fotopension” (G), Fotopension, Cologne | |
| 2008 | “Wo die einen gehen und stehen, träumen die anderen ungeniert” (S), Galerie Fotopension, Cologne |
| 2007 | “La Danse” (D), with the dancer and painter Ghislaine Watanabe, Studio Linke, Cologne |
| 2006 | “Farbiges Köln” (within the week of architecture Cologne; D) with the photographer Irina Scheidgen, Pavillon am Zülpicher Wall, Cologne |
Bibliography |
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| 2012 | “The Swimmer”, hand printed artist book by SJ Butler (text) and Steffi Pusch (photographs), The Old Stile Press, Llandogo (publisher) |
| Black & White Magazine, November issue, feature on the artist book “The Swimmer” | |
| “Private few and book launch“, sussexliving.com (9/10/2012) | |
| “Q&A SJ Butler”, neg-press.com (9/4/2012) | |
| “Steffi Pusch”, knightwebbgallery.com (2012) | |
| “Steffi Pusch”, ashdowngallery.co.uk (2012) | |
| 2010 | “Festival Exhibition Artist — Steffi Pusch”, crowboroughartsfestival.blogspot.de (8/31/2010) |
| 2008 | “Steffi Pusch – Wo die einen gehen und stehen, träumen die anderen ungeniert”, fotopension.de (2008) |
Portfolio
Steffi Pusch
“My work often reflects my ambivalent feelings about the experience of being at home, being elsewhere, being alien, being different, being involved. I try to visualise these feelings while experimenting with different materials, cameras (mostly film but also digital) and views as well as multiple exposures, textures or blurring.
I also experience moments of overwhelming clarity and awareness — often when I am in nature or with people. These resulting still lives and portraits are creations of silence and concentration. The portraits in particular need to be taken in an intimate, trustful atmosphere if they are to become something the person recognises as an image of her or himself. I am not a studio photographer. Instead I go out and visit the people who sit for me. We talk as I work and I get to know their stories and personalities, which enables me, I hope, to capture the essence of their characters in my portraits. And so a portrait session becomes much more than just a shooting.” (Steffi Pusch)