Katharine Kollman is an aquatic analogue photographer who has exhibited across the United States. Recent exhibitions include galleries such as LA Center of Photography, Black Box Gallery in Portland, Oregon, A Smith Gallery in Johnson City, Texas, Decode Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, and Art Square Gallery in New York. She has won honorable mention awards with LA Center of Photography, Technical Image Press Association, The Flow Photo Contest, and Whalebone Photo Contest. Katharine has also been published by Field Mag, Flow Photo, Pamplemousse Magazine, Dream Issue. New Paltz Photo, and Others Magazine.
The photography by Katharine Kollman remains steeped in documentary aesthetics as she captures her lifestyle as a professional deepdiver and instructor. These reflective photographs shine light upon a world of discovery, a vast open space resembling an abyss and capturing the abstracted collective forms of submerged mountains of coral fauna. Beyond the coral, at times, Katharine has been able to capture the wondrous nature of ocean beasts such as a pod of dolphins swooping through the ocean floor in perfect synchronization like ballet dancers or a lone stingray wallowing out in the open and headed towards the shadows.
Usually working in format black and white photography, although some of her works are in color, Katharine recreates these images manually in her at-home photo lab. The rich blacks and open saturation of light, followed by the granular texture of the analogue photography, invokes images steeped in a haze of chairoscuro and sfumato simultaneously. Katharine’s figures are captured in their natural state of exploration and recreation, further enhancing the documentary quality of her art. These actors engage in a vast environment, enveloped by the great emptiness of negative space amongst the shimmering seams of light penetrating the water from the surface. Although the divers are somewhat deep in the ocean, they remain just close enough to the surface to reveal the penetrating sun paint the oceanic landscape with beams of rays.
Submerged # 17 (pictured above) depicts a young man swimming through the cavernous expanse of a mountain of rock and coral. The direction of his legs and torso indicate he may be trying to reach for the ocean floor or perhaps investigate the bottom portion of the open cavern. Up above, rays of blinding white light paint the ocean surface while below remains an ominous, mysterious shroud of shadows with one spot of focused light on the floor. The photograph remains one of Katharine's most dramatic and theatrical pieces, despite the documentary approach of capturing the scene.
Katharine Kollman reveals how artists can reflect their direct lifestyle and experiences and turn such a reflection into fine forms of art. What gives her work such an authentic experience would be her process in lab techniques and capturing actual recreation and exploration in real-time amidst the imperfections of format photography. These photographs reveal a livelihood steeped in discovery of the unknown in a realm largely misunderstood by humankind. The aesthetic qualities of her works also give call to action to preserve these rarely seen, fantastical environments so future generations may appreciate their intrinsic beauty and functional forms as coral ecosystems which preserve the chain of underwater life.
