When Dazed last spoke to Canadian photographer Kristie Muller, she revealed how her love of film photography started at a very early age. In the past couple of years, her fervour for photos is far more controlled and also a lot more refined. Her sensitive eye picks details from everyday life around her, which she cleverly frames with an unusual perspective. Playing with the visual isolation of chosen objects, Muller singles out segments of reality that one’s brain can keep in mind for no reason at all, just the way we perceive the real world.
Dazed Digital: What is the intended underlying theme that tends to run through your work, if any?
Kristie Muller: No one thing intended but in terms of what tends to: close colours and gradients, lines, shared points of view, tricks and jokes, my sister. Lately, surveillance. the only constants are formal aspects I think. the specifics shift with what's around or what I'm into, isolating the ideal parts of wherever.
DD: What was the first photograph you ever took?
Kristie Muller: I used to take photos from the Walmart photolab lost and found. Portraits people were scanning to blow up and then forgot. Uh, pictures of myself on disposable cameras.
DD: Why is photography the medium which you choose to communicate?
Kristie Muller: Because I'm not a writer and it doesn't make a mess. I can do it easily whenever.
DD: Your photos all seem to be slightly off, playing on things that perhaps are not there - what are you hoping to convey with this sense of atmosphere?
Kristie Muller: I thought they were on! everything in the pictures is definitely there. I want them to be as little about the camera as possible, as close to what I see myself as possible. If there's a particular atmosphere, it's hopefully the same one my head's in.
DD: What's next?
Kristie Muller: An all new spread in Bad Day this spring, a book with Steel Editions out of Italy soon. Mostly focusing on getting a solo show together. More pictures.
