Beate Gütschow (German, b. 1970)

Beate Gütschow studied at the School of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Germany as well as at the School of Fine Arts in Oslo, Norway. Her tableaux landscapes are digital assemblages of details from her various archives of images of trees, fields, knolls, clouds, people and shadows. In her first series, "LS" (an abbreviation of Landschaft, or landscape), Gütschow used photographic means to reconstruct depictions of landscape in 17th and 18th century paintings. With the aid of computer software, she assembled scores of image fragments to create photographs that adhere to the compositional principles of the ideal landscape. The body of work entitled "S" for Stadt (city) consists of large black-and-white photographs that are also composed of multiple images. Diverse architectural structures and geographical locations are combined within a single picture.

Beate Gütschow has received numerous awards including the Pixel Award, the Otto-Dix-Prize of New Media, and the Villa Aurora fellowship in Los Angeles. She was appointed guest professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig from 2009-2010; and since 2011 she is a professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. 

Image © Beate Gütschow