Fiona Struengmann

Struengmann’s Needleview series abandons the use of a camera lens in favour of a needle-sized pinhole; a variation of the Camera Obscura. By creating her own aperture, and thus controlling the amount of light which can pass into the camera, Struengmann produces an image in which the regular depth of field becomes a scene of blurry impressions. In documenting her natural surroundings in this way, Struengmann is able to “dive into a personal state of being, described in shapes, forms, light and shadow”. Similarly, the effect on the spectator is one of internal contemplation, as we focus on the wordless dialogue between us and the image - a moment she remarks as ‘turning into eternity’.

Fiona Streungmann’s restrained design aesthetic is best represented in her photographic works and drawings on paper. While the two mediums of drawing and photography are not used in combination, her photographic register reads almost as a drawing, and similarly her pointillistic mode of draughtsmanship produces works which, from afar, create images of photographic preciseness. When observed up close, we sense the passage of time involved in the work’s creations, and feelings of meditative reflection and patience are drawn out of Streungmann’s techniques - such as the repetitive dotting of her drawings and the journeys she has taken to the places documented in her photographs.