Photo Profile: Franziska Ostermann

I picked up a camera when I was 16 and never let go. My name is Franziska Ostermann – I am 19 years old and from Germany.

Photography is my passion. For me it is the medium to express what´s inside of me and to tell people a story that they wouldn´t understand if you just told them.

I am a huge fan of Alice Springs, Helen Levitt and a lot of photographers I found on the internet.

The language of images is very special and unique, like everybody may interpret a photograph differently. But the main idea – that’s what I like to transport through it – giving an impulse to think and reflect themselves, the world.

I like to think of photography as a mixture of subconscious and consciousness. There is so much art around us, everywhere. Of course there are many artists out there you get inspired by, but I mostly get inspired by life and living, by society and nature, by interaction.

I think that inspiration is everywhere – you just need to look at things openly and differently. Starting as an observer, I noticed that I want to do something on my own.

I admire Franz Kafka for the surrealism and the dream-logic he created in novels like “The Trial” and like to try expressing it on my own. Surrealism and asking questions is one thing that fascinates me. Sometimes, inspiration is like a dream you cannot wake up from until you get it behind the mirror of your camera. Like our minds are put in order while we are sleeping and dreaming.

Photography for me is an art that differs a lot from all others, like music, painting or writing. To express what´s on your mind you take visual elements that bind us all together, that are in everyone minds. That everybody knows. Like people, trees, fashion, the sea, nature, buildings. You do not change it; you only combine it differently than others might do.

People from all over the world are able to understand a photograph; there is no obstacle like language. Different people will combine the image with different memories and thoughts, but they all will find similarity.

Taking different layers, common elements and creating something new, maybe surreal, that is what fascinates me the most about photography.

Links:

Website: http://cargocollective.com/FranziskaFranziska
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lichtspiele