14.01.10
Award Winning Still Life Photographer Karin Berndl Interviewed
Karin Berndl may be The Association of Photographers (AOP) Photographer of the Year for 2009, and she may have worked on major campaigns such as Boodles and Selfridges, but she couldn’t have her feet more firmly on the ground if she was bolted down. “I got quite a lot of attention after winning, but I’m not really comfortable with that,” she explains.
Having put herself forward for the prize simply to see her work in the AOP’s award book, the Austrian was surprised, but of course flattered, to win the prestigious accolade. “It was really nice to win, but I don’t really like being the centre of attention. Some people thought I’d only ever shot beauty, so it helped my work to get that type of recognition.” Berndl is clearly more comfortable behind the camera. Magazine commissions have included Tatler, Harper’s Bazaar and German Vogue, although it was in beauty photography where Karin really began.
After starting university in Vienna studying languages (French and Polish) then having a brief sojourn into journalism studies, Berndl felt she needed something different. “Architecture always really interested me, but the 10-year study prospect put me off. I’m very impatient and I wanted instant gratification, which I get now from photography. You take pictures in the morning, get in the dark room and you can have the photos that evening.”
A love of photography is in her family. “I grew up with my dad and my grandparents taking lots of pictures and using darkrooms,” Berndl explains. “They shot portraits, mainly.” And it was a stroll into the open day of an art college that sealed her fate as she realised she wanted to study the art. “I thought: ‘Wow, I can take photos professionally.’ I’d hung out with photographers, but it had never occurred to me that you could actually do this for a living. I liked it so much I decide to give it a go.” Having been in the industry for 12 years now, she has made a great success of giving photography ‘a go’. London is Berndl’s base and one that seems to suit her well.
Moving here primarily to learn English, she is now fluent in it. “My first foreign language was French and I was embarrassed that I couldn’t speak English. French only gets you so far and Paris was a wonderful place to live,
but I wanted to learn English. Austria had just joined the European Union so it was easy for me to move.”
Berndl recognises the UK capital as an incredibly inspirational place, creatively speaking. “The people I get to work with here are so inspiring and there is such a choice of people. It’s an oasis and so open, though in some ways unreal, which I only notice when I leave. People here are so open to other cultures and languages.”
And she is adamant she has a great team of people working around her – all of them primarily based in London – and seems reluctant to take full credit for her images without acknowledging them as well. A look at Berndl’s work and one is struck by the clarity of every still life object she shoots. Each piece of jewellery in her Boodles campaign, for example, looks like it could be lifted from the page and worn right there and then – although she credits the perfection of the objects for that. “The items are really well made and very beautiful so it’s easy to shoot them.” Humble to the last.
Asked how she ended up in such a niche area of the photography world, it seemed she stumbled into shooting luxury items and jewellery after some years immersed in beauty photography. After a shoot for Tatler,
in which she and her team shot jewellery surrounded by flowers, the commissions started flowing in. Berndl was drawn to how still life, for her, allowed the intricacies and details of such stunning objects to be captured. Although she cites her biggest influences as photographers such as Jacques-Henri Lartigue and Irving Penn, Berndl has other forces at play constantly inciting thought and stimulation: the paintings of Rembrandt and Hammershoi; old black and white movies; and Disney cartoons, which “inspire [my] still life lighting a lot”.
Her AOP accolade was well deserved and it will be fascinating to see how her career develops in the future.
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