Words by Cosima Wider

Fräulein Talents: Olivia Noss

Olivia Noss is a Berlin-based photographer, arts writer and photo editor from Washington DC. Working mostly in black and white, her images, with their striking tenderness and sense of mystery, seem to provide the viewer with more questions than answers. Instead of looking for a definite interpretation or meaning to Noss’ photographs, Fräulein Magazine sat down with Olivia to talk about her inspiration and her approach to photography, doing so with the hopes that readers might discover the everyday magic within her work themselves.

“Photography felt like a homecoming because it granted me a newfound freedom.”

Cosima Wider: When talking with creatives, I’m always interested in how it all started. How did your interest in photography first emerge?

Olivia Noss: I first got into photography when I was eighteen. I was studying in New Orleans at the time and took a darkroom photo course. Before then, I’d always done drawing and collage, and a bit of painting. Photography felt like a homecoming in a sense because it granted me a newfound freedom. Before then, I was also working out of a studio. It offered me a way to engage more deeply with where I was, which felt authentic to how I wanted to move through the world at the time. There was an immediacy to it that felt very satisfying to me.

CW: This immediacy of photography is not as present with analogue photography, right? How has the camera that you use now (a large format camera) changed your relationship to this immediacy that you first liked about photography?

ON: Shooting analogue, particularly large format, forces you to slow down in a way that’s gratifying. Because you can’t see the results in real time, you have to operate on your own intuition. Arbus always talked about there being a recalcitrance to the camera as a tool. It inevitably rebels against you in unexpected ways. You can approach a shoot with an idea in mind, but the resulting image is never exactly how you picture it. It’s a medium that you have to wrestle with constantly, and this pushback keeps me on my feet.

CW: And what do you look for when you photograph something? How do you approach an image, keeping this resistance from the medium in mind?

ON: I like to make work that’s suspended in time, so to speak. With that, I’m interested in slippages, or brief moments in which cultural and visual indicators of the present day reveal themselves in subtle ways. When it comes to seeking out subjects, I look for those who possess several qualities that often exist at odds with one another: a beauty and an ugliness, an allure and a repulsion, a self-possession and a questioning, qualities that convey some sort of inner tension.

“I like to make work that’s suspended in time.”

CW: That's actually also how I've come to interpret your photos. I couldn't really say which year or decade the image is from. I find this fascinating because they seem old and modern simultaneously. Is time something that you’ve had a fascination with always? After all, working with time or timelessness is also a very specific way of looking at and approaching the world.

ON: I don’t know if it necessarily has to do with an interest in time so much as one in escapism. I really enjoy sinking into photographs and finding a cozy place within them. Photos that I like to make are generally quite similar in feel to the photos that I’m drawn to.

Cecil Beaton is high up there for me. He’s a major reference when it comes to world-building. Tim Walker once said of Beaton’s work, ‘in a world filled with so much horror, there’s a nobility to fantasy.’ I think it’s a really lovely way of thinking about the genre-that there’s a nobility to the pursuit of beauty and play, and the excitement it might offer others.

CW: Are there other people that inspire you?

ON: I also really love Graciela Iturbide’s work. She’s someone that’s able to find magic in the everyday. Tanyth Berkeley is another favorite of mine. And of course, Lee Miller.

CW: So that’s something you’re especially drawn to, the magic of the everyday?

ON: It’s a cliche, but sure. I’m drawn to magical realism, in both literature and photography, which you could say is a magic within ordinary life that distorts or enriches our understanding of reality.

CW: Apart from being a photographer, you also work as an arts writer. You've written about artists like Claude Cahun and Rineke Dijkstra. How does writing about these other artists influence your work? How important is writing for you, in general, for your own practice?

ON: I initially turned to writing out of necessity, since it was a way of supplementing my photo work. Now that I’m writing more often, it’s actually helped me reassess my own approach to image-making. When I first started making portraits, I would have my subject photograph me in return. This inversion of photographer to subject gave me a better understanding of how to direct others. I’d like to think that writing about other people’s work has a similar effect with regard to formulating and executing ideas. I consider a photographic practice to be something that’s constantly in flux. Writing about other artists’ work helps me stay loose.

CW: You've lived in New York before coming to Berlin on a Fulbright Scholarship. What first drew you to Berlin? And how has living in Berlin changed your approach to photography?

ON: Berlin has a much older history as a city than New York. In some senses, there are parts of it that feel trapped in time. You can feel this through the architecture and even the landscape, both of which really appeal to me. Berlin also felt like a city I could break into, given its smaller size, a city I could move through relatively anonymously. It’s offered me a better quality of life, one that’s slower and has allowed me to really nurture an artistic practice. I wouldn’t say it’s completely changed my approach to photography, but it’s granted me more time to make work and be more present in my daily life.

CW: When you were previously talking about timelessness in your work, I thought that Berlin is actually a great city for this. It holds so much history. I feel like so many ages and generations and even points in history still exist simultaneously.

ON: Totally. Certain threads of history continue to weave themselves in and around this city, and we feel their presence even as we move through contemporary life here. There’s a spiritual weight, particularly in the landscape–something palpably mystical.

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