Selbstporträt Karin Mack, 1985
Karin Mack is an Austrian artist and architectural photographer of the feminist avant-garde of the 1970s. From 1967 to 1978, Mack documented Austrian building culture as an architectural photographer and visual chronicler.
“To depict architecture in a three-dimensional way, I worked extensively with light and shadow. I usually walked around the building at a distance and then slowly ventured inside. But I never wanted razor-sharp, ‘polished’ photos.” (Karin Mack)
Mack’s archive of architectural photography comprises not only photographs of buildings, urban spaces, and cultural events of the time, but also numerous photographs of key figures in the architecture and art scene, including Friedrich Achleitner, Günter Brus, Friedrich Kurrent, Hermann Nitsch, and Gerhard Rühm. Her photographs also documented urban transformation processes. For example, the preservation of the Spittelberg quarter or suburbanization in the Vienna outskirts. Her architectural photography thus combines social and cultural-historical reflection.
Holdings
- Approx. 2,500 color and black-and-white photographs
Biography
- Born 17.09.1940 in Vienna
- 1956 Began pursuing photography
- 1962 Married Friedrich Achleitner (until 1972)
- 1967–1978 Architectural photographer
- 1970–1980 Documentary work on Vienna’s art and cultural scene
- 1975–1986 Conceptual, feminist self-portraits (including Bügeltraum [Ironing Dream] and trifogli)
- 1977–1982 Member of the INTAKT group (International Action Group of Women Artists)
- 1978–1988 Studied art history and Italian at the University of Vienna
- From 1980 on Member of the Künstlerhaus Wien
- 1982 Photo series Weiße Schatten auf schwarzem Schnee (White Shadows on Black Snow)
- 1982–1985 Das neue Universum (The New Universe), a six-part series of photographic tableaux
- 1994–2004 lived in the Netherlands; artistic work on nature and landscape
- Since 2007 member of the FLUSS photography initiative; works on the European media landscape
- 2010 began working with the pinhole camera
- 2010 Awarded the Golden Laurel by the Künstlerhaus Wien
- 2015/16 Lecturer at the Technical University of Vienna, Institute of Art and Design
- 2018 Featured in the documentary film Sie ist der andere Blick (She Is the Other Gaze), directed by Christiana Perschon
