By Veronica Jonsson Via Art Connect
Water has always had a swirling presence in photographer Matthew Coleman’s life. From his childhood days spent on the south coast of England to now, standing in LiTE-HAUS Galerie’s bathroom, in Neukölln, photographing Julia Sabrowski in the bathtub of water. The first time Matthew did a shoot like this he found the result too weird. Now, a couple of years later, capturing the interaction between his subject and water has become one of his biggest fascinations.
“It’s my element”, he says and continues: “It emerges, in an instant, is giving form by perception, a momentary dance, a union between two separate elements coming together into a single oneness. Pulsating, flickering, fleeting, as if they were tiny quantum particles appearing and disappearing on the cosmos of water. All one has to do is to place a person within it and see it swirl around them, like paint, with each gesture of water as a kind of brushstroke of the beatific”.
Julia gracefully poses in the water while Matthew’s moving around her with a light in one hand and a camera in the other. The rhythm of his shutter and the sound of the water is filling the room. Sometimes he stops to see if she’s ok, make a joke or just talk a bit, but mostly he shoots. It seems to be a spontaneous process.
