Karin Apollonia Müller

Müller was born in Heidelberg, studied at the Folkwang School in Essen. She creates powerful photographs with a muted palette and low contrast By juxtaposing the human figure (actual or implied) subtly positioned within a complex landscape, the images evoke a sense of displacement. The compositions are subtle and evocative, possessing a haunting potency. As a foreigner, Müller's "visitor" status in Los Angeles is expressed by a sense of alienation and beauty. The desolate beauty and latent sense of danger inform MŽller's images, which reflect the fleeting and ephemeral movements of Los Angeles. People sleep on the ground, gather on the beach and go about seemingly ritualistic movements within the haze and smog of the Western sky- operating in a biscuit colored sublime. The figures are faceless, alone, sometimes appear homeless and often disengaged from the sprawling city scape that surrounds them: a traffic cop is still among stopped traffic, a homeless man carries his mattress near a freeway and surfers sit alone, submerged in the ocean, tiny toy soldiers engage in mock war games.

Müller's work has been recently exhibited at the Photographer's Gallery in London in a dual show with Garry Winogrand and is currently included in Mental Wilderness at Gale Gates in Brooklyn. Her work is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The New School, New York, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin, the University of Iowa and the IFA, Berlin. Müller has recently received a commission from the Getty Foundation and a residency from the Lannan Foundation. She has received awards from Kodak, the German Consulate the GHS in Essen and a DAAD Fellowship. A first mongraph of her work will be published in February 2001 by Kruse (info@KrusePublishers) and disributed by DAP.