Kathryn Allen Hurni, submitted artwork
Kathryn Allen Hurni
Visual Art
Charleston, SC
Kathryn Allen Hurni discovered her passion for photography at age 13, a path that led her to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned a B.F.A. in Photography in 2006. Her practice began with traditional film photography, working in both color and black and white. While she has photographed in formats such as 35mm and 4x5, she favors medium format. Now using both film and digital mediums, Kathryn approaches each project with meticulous care, especially in her printing process, to preserve the detail and depth in her work. Her photography has been exhibited at institutions like Aperture Gallery, Manifest Gallery, and The Center for Fine Art Photography. In 2015, Kathryn held her first solo show at Penn State University, followed by a second solo exhibition at EPSY Gallery in Wales, UK, in 2018. Most recently, she attended the NES Artist Residency in Iceland, where she developed a series of abstracted, painterly landscapes inspired by the dramatic Icelandic scenery. Additionally, Kathryn’s work has appeared in publications including T Magazine, DETAILS, WSJ, and W Magazine. She currently divides her time between her fine art practice and commercial work as a freelance documentary photographer, continually exploring the boundaries between artistic and documentary storytelling.
Works
Kathryn Allen Hurni, submitted artwork
Grasslands | Islandi was photographed during my one-month NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland, in October 2024. Traveling along Iceland’s west coast from Akureyri to Vik, I immersed myself in its sweeping landscapes.I was struck by the vastness of the terrain—a scale almost impossible to capture. A two-dimensional image often feels like a weak facsimile, lacking the depth and presence of being rooted in space. To express the emotions and vibrancy of a place best experienced in three dimensions, I focused on Iceland’s sensory essence, recognizing its visual beauty as inseparable from its atmosphere. This realization led me away from traditional landscape photography toward images that evoke light, texture, and abstraction, creating an impressionistic, emotive sensibility.This shift sparked an unexpected fascination with Icelandic grasses. Often overlooked in favor of mountains or coastlines, they became central to my work. Their color, variety, and movement under Iceland’s changing weather captivated me. I sought to capture their fleeting interplay of movement, light, and rhythm—translating it into something that evokes an emotional response.This body of work distills Iceland’s essence into images that prioritize feeling over form, inviting the viewer to sense, rather than see, its ever-changing beauty.
