Between the Skin and the Sea is the new book by German artist Katrin Koenning. Katrin lives abroad in Australia, and that will factor into the discussion regarding her latest book, published by Chose Commune, the wonderful French publisher who put out her book with equally talented Sarker Protick in 2016, entitled Astres Noirs. This fruitful collaboration was an examination of cooperation and exchange, presented as a haunting echo of life in the 21st Century, with a feeling of compression, disconnection, anxiety, and a deep, cosmic glare emanating from the images. The project was seductive, but a sense of displacement and dissolution accompanied it. I can think of it similarly to Trent Parke’s recent photobook Monument, but with a more overtone of abstraction.

It is vital to mention Astre Noirs in the context of what Between the Skin and Sea is not. Whereas a strange type of cosmic melancholy was found in the Astre Noirs, a cold and abstract book, Between the Skin and Sea presents intimate, observational, and robust photographs that are more in line with a feeling of care and concern for the everyday. They are photographic images without suggestive artifice. They emit a strange type of hope amidst the challenging topic of the Australian fires and the general themes of uncertainty that many of us face.

I’m not sure, but the tone here seems to be one of love, familiarity, and hope from those close to the artist. Childhood seems to play a role, as do various flora and fauna, and ecological pivoting toward nature and wonderment for the natural world. Recurring people enter the frame who present as an unmistakable loved one. One almost gets the impression of a family beginning, but this could also be the publisher’s careful editing and sequencing, notable in books where family life and the lives of children are vital, from Vasantha Yogananthan to Issei Suda.

Koenning’s book is thick with images, and it’s fantastic to see the artist put so much material into one significant book. Most of it is monochrome, but there’s a section of color photography, which is a nice relief from the grays presented throughout. Small breaks in which text enters help give a broad brushstroke about what some of the images may reflect, and then add a personal note to the conversation. The images have a playful interaction with each other.

Though some of the topics are heavy, including Australia’s more recent 2019 and 2020 fires, the work remains light. There are overtones of this particular discussion in the orange cover and the orange tones in the color images, which suggest a golden light. However, once the reading of the book settles in and the orange is considered, the point is clear: the orange haze from the fires has helped shape our reading of the book. All the suggestions about fires and the ecological concerns they present are carried through the book and its design elements, allowing the beauty of Koenning’s black and white images to shine without lapsing into depressive emulations of the horrors they could otherwise convey. They are instead annotations to the events, less than political dialogues. They are meditations.

This is not to suggest that the entire book is about Australia. From what I can see, there are photographs taken in a variety of geographies, from Greece to Italy, and possibly the artist’s native Germany. Overall, it is about Koenning’s ability to make beautiful photographs, snapshots of the upended age of shit that we all find ourselves manouevering through with hip-wading boots, looking for dry land. I am reminded of Max Dupain, Wouter Van de Voorde, Adrianna Ault, Matthew Genitempo, and some of Emma Philipps’ images when I thumb through the book. There is a symmetry to the pictures, a desire to craft and edit photographs carefully, that is refreshing and seems to belong to a generation as concerned about the craft of image-making as they are with the conceptual roots of the work bound in book form. Each element reverberates and confirms the lasting magic of the medium, letting the viewer, most importantly, project into the work and draw what they might from it, without overbearing instructions on how to do so—highly Recommended!