Originally from the UK, I have spent most of my adult life living and working in Austria. I have been taking photographs since I was a teenager but started to photograph deliberately 10 years ago, inspired initially by the work of Weegee, Martin Parr, Elliott Erwitt, René Burri and Sebastião Salgado. From 2021 to 2022 I completed diplomas in digital picture editing (online) and digital photography (on-site), at LIK Akademie, Vienna.
I have been working on developing my own practice since LIK, and am starting to work on series.
Due to a visual impairment I view the world through rose (sometimes orange!)-tinted glasses – edge-filter spectacles to cut glare and increase contrast. I resist defining myself by this impairment, but it has undoubtedly influenced my photography. Edited to suit my eyesight, my images usually fall into one of two categories: vivid colour, or high-contract black-and-white. Subjects tend to be isolated and rarely dissolve into the background. For this reason, some people may see my work as placative, unsubtle, lacking layers. I see it as focused, immediate, minimalistic. One friend of mine has termed it “vehement”.
During a week’s course at UAL in 2023 I reflected on themes that pop up often in my work. The theme of transience is prominent, with many subjects showing weathering, collapse, or traces of things only temporarily present. Reflections are another favourite. Both themes lead me to think about the extent to which photography accurately or inaccurately represents what we see around us. Many of my photos revolve around the mundane. Patterns fascinate me, especially when they are broken; a theme of imperfection which runs parallel to that of transience.
Due to my visual impairment, I often invert colours when using a computer. This has led me to experiment with colour inversion in photo editing. One of these experiments resulted in a self-portrait which won the Gold Medal in the student section of the Vienna Photo Awards in 2022, another was exhibited as part of the banner exhibition accompanying a series of outdoor concerts.
You can see the portfolio of work I put together for my application for the MA in Photography at Falmouth University here. The page links also contains links to other work of mine.
I began my MA at Falmouth in May 2024. Work posted on fal.kayfisher.art is mostly work in progress towards this degree and a Final Major Project to be completed in 2026.
