Your name
Stephanie O'Connor
Place of birth
New Zealand
Place where you live now
Berlin, Germany
3 words to describe you
A lazy perfectionist
Why do you take pictures?
I'm terrible with tactile things that require three-dimensionality and dexterity. I love the 2D nature of photography, and the flat plane that leads into visual worlds. My gateway to photography was using photoshop when I was 15, so it felt organic to get there and without thought. I still love to use the two in conjunction with each other, I find it incredibly relaxing and therapeutic.
Where do you get your inspiration?
Mainly short fiction and poetry. Interviews between writers, conversations between poets or creative partners.
Who are your influences?
Etel Adnan, Louise Glück, Lydia Davis, Cecilia Vicuña. Mainly poets!
What determines the subject matter you choose?
My work is mainly based around the memory that makes up ones identity, so I'd say the act of remembering - and at the moment that manifests itself through nature and familiar faces.
What impact would you like your art to have?
It is always nice to feel transported when you see something visual that resonates, or that something you've made has encouraged someone to reach out to you. This impact of connection and finding people through what you've created is wonderful, and fosters community and relationship building. So if anything, I can only say I appreciate what I've made mainly because of the friendships that have sprung from it!
What artwork do you never get bored with?
Lucille Boiron - Womb. Gregory Halpern - ZZYZX. Kris Munsya - Genetic bomb.
Is there anything you want to add?
Be okay with having a clumsy voice in the beginning with creating. The more atrocious in the beginning, the better it will become.

Under the weight of flowers
Project statement

“Memory is something that surprises you; it’s your identity, it’s yourself, but it only comes through sometimes. And you never know when it will come. It’s like an eruption. “ Simone Fattal

A new collection of images from Stephanie O’Connor captures the delicate fecundity of Spring. O’Connor scoured urban cities for flora, the urban concrete city densely layered with histories and populated by transitory residents who bloom and fade with the seasons.

Cropped close-ups blur the boundaries of human and floral forms, creating an urban garden of light and intricate texture, dense with memory of the lush gardens of O’Connor’s childhood in Aotearoa New Zealand – and the familial intimacy to be found there. Colours move like the memory of a fragrance – rich, layered; their gentle temporal fade ruptured by new waves of remembering.

People feature in macro; distance collapses across the series into an intimate clutch of blooms. The fondness of these subjects with the photographer is evident – they gaze warmly at an unknown horizon. The heart of a bromeliad wet with dew, is sticky with life; eyes become flowers – flowers, eyes.

Drawing on the late poet/artist Etel Adnan’s love of flowers (for they “shine stronger / than the sun”) and the fragile knowledge of their temporariness (“their eclipse means the end of / Times”), O’Connor dwells in the present moment, the active verb of Spring, these graceful blooms and their human beholders stilled in a dream-like dawn celebrating new life – however long it may last.

stephanie o’connor
@steph_oconnor