Natalie Obermaier
After graduating magna cum laude from Philadelphia’s Drexel University with a degree in Photography, L.A.-based artist Natalie Obermaier moved to Seattle where she worked alongside acclaimed photographer, Jock Sturges. Working in the darkroom five days a week for three years under his guidance, she mastered the craft of black-and-white photographic printing, while also acting as his studio manager and model. Following this intensive immersion into large-format black-and-white photography, she traveled extensively, discovering her voice as an artist. Her early bodies of work in black and white film are soulful and classic, showing a natural and deep connection with the people she photographs. In addition to her black and white work, in 2012 the artist began taking a photograph every day for 365 days of the year, using multiple formats, from film to iPhone. The results were printed and exhibited at the end of each year for three consecutive years as immersive installations.
MOTHER
Artist Statement
Coalescing is a series of collages made in response to the incessant onslaught of mass media and pressures of mainstream beauty standards found within. Women’s fashion magazines in particular stand at a crossroads of cult, consumerism and the unattainable image. By re-appropriating and deconstructing those glossy pages something truer, hand-made and authentic can be expressed. The resulting juxtapositions seek to remind one of the visual and psychological manipulations abound in advertising while also creating a new dialogue in response. Coalescing manipulates the manipulated as both rebuttal to the aesthetic pressures of advertising and as reclamation of the human image to speak a deeper truth by reflecting a more personable and representative spirit of self. Using found images pays homage to both of the original subjects and photographers but also appropriates their likenesses in order to remix the meanings and messages; weaving my own narrative out of many others.
Warrior In The Rain, 2024