Call to Submit: 2026 Booooooom Illustration Awards
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“Odyssey” by Photographer Pauline Köhlen

A visual exploration of time, space, and self by Rotterdam-based photographer Pauline Köhlen. Fluctuating between documentary and fiction, Köhlen’s work grapples with the interplay between the self and the spaces in which it emerges and evolves. In contemplating the human experience, she is drawn to the intangible processes that are hidden from the naked eye, attempting to capture and describe them through her artistic expression. Köhlen often incorporates her own body through a performative approach that utilizes her physicality and the value of transparency and vulnerability.

“As I stood within these extensive landscapes, under the boundless sky, my perspective was almost the only thing that reminded me of myself. My thoughts wandered, they scattered over the endless landscape, they went as far away from me as they could. How grand, the lived experience, to feel and be able to construct our own narratives. Each and every one of us composing our own perpetual growing blueprint of how we bind ourselves to the world.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pauline Köhlen’s Website

Pauline Köhlen on Instagram

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