Stephanie O’Connor colors New Zealand with her emotions

Back in New Zealand, her homeland, the photographer Stephanie O’Connor She finds herself overwhelmed by a flood of emotions. A new and strange feeling, which she expels by directing her lens towards the surrounding landscape. The result is a work with a hallucinatory aura that paints the world in dream-like colors.

“Canadian artist Moira Davey talks about a kind of photography that resembles the act of reading: both require “drifting and purpose,” becoming “a project of absorption and assemblage.” I like the idea of ​​embarking on an unexpected adventure, guided by a single intention, or a single feeling.“, says Stephanie O’Connor. She also wanders intuitively, absorbing her environment to construct nuanced stories with rich colors. Shadows conjure an alternative reality that painters would have painted with crazy visions. It was in the fine arts classes that the author began to become interested in the eighth art. “I think I felt terrible about my teacher because I was so slow, and his negative comments made me look elsewhere.”“, she confides. In high school, I discovered film and photography, and fell under the spell of these processes, as well as the unique atmosphere that emanates from the darkroom. “Its extraordinary red color, its magnification, its mysterious smell of chemicals…” She remembers.

Since then, she has let her appetite for dream lead her to many projects. In Berlin, where she currently resides, she doubles her collaborations with writers, poets, musicians and other artists, and continues to imagine new creative ways of showing the world. It is an approach that will accompany her when she returns to New Zealand, where she belongs. “I was overwhelmed by the family dynamics, the power of the memories, and this feeling of newness that was unfamiliar to me. I did not expect the impact of these feelings.”says the artist. So, in an attempt to bring order to her mind, she began composing All the stars stand close in the summer air. A work that chronicles her rediscovery of the land that made her grow up.