Biography
Matthaeus Kostner (1973) grew up in Val Gardena (Italy), well known for its sculptors and painters. He studied sculpture at the Art Institute in Ortisei and after graduating he improved his sculpting skills at his uncle’s workshop, sculpting life-size statues in wood. From 1998-1999 he worked at the Art Institute in Ortisei as an assistant for sculpting and painting classes. Following this experience, he worked for several years at the Sevi Design Studio developing wooden toys with different designers, leading them to get from the drawing to a functional toy. This experience also allowed him to travel to China, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, meeting different cultures. In 2002 Matthaeus finally opened his own photography studio in Ortisei, working mainly for artists. In the years from 2004 to 2007 he spent the summer months at the International Academy Salzburg, studying with several famous photographers and being awarded twice with a scholarship.
Matthaeus works a lot inspecting time with photography, mixing technical with conceptional approaches. Sometimes using the media in ways they were not thought for, achieving new and surprising results.
In earlier times, travelers kept note of their experiences in diaries. This task became replaced by photography, at first involving great effort, and through technological advances becoming ever more comfortable. This has led to vast amounts of photographs, endless evenings of the old slideshows, or their modern equivalent on the computer screen. Matthaeus also travelled a lot to visit museums, art fairs, photo festivals and meeting people from different cultures. This made him curious on how other people see and depict their trips or vacations, so he stared to ask people for their holiday photos. This led him to the “meeting point” project, in which he stopped tourists in Salzburg asking for their photos, first and afterwards to the “travel notes” project.
In his photographs he works together all the photos from a single holiday or day trip to form one single picture. At first glance, you can see colours and structures, looking longer you will discover more and more details, a kind of journey into the image begins.
Matthaeus likes to find new ways to show the usual, elevate the everyday or normal to something special, surprising and emotional.
