There are some great moments we share with close friends and family as well as total and complete strangers. Graduations, days at the beach, carnivals and concerts are all experiences we’ve had with people really close to us and those we’ve never met. Somewhere in the world, people with entirely different lives briefly touch hands with your own. You have something in common with someone you may never see or meet. German-born artist Katrin Korfmann aims to capture those moments and make visible a larger scene we were entirely unaware of.

 

Korfmann, who is usually based in Amsterdam, travels and tries to capture entire scenes from an aerial point of view. This puts a spin not only on the scenery, but also on the experience. Her aerial view captures a scene much larger, captures more people, and interestingly enough, captures them over time. Placing her camera above a scene, Korfman takes photos over the course of a few hours and then intricately layers them on top of one another. She aims to capture the everyday of each location she travels to, which is why more often than not her pieces are not just one single shot, but layers of shots over time.

Her photos seem to capture our similarities more than our differences. She finds that many times people in a given location exhibit the same habits and take up the same spaces. We are, after all reduced to creatures very small and observable from her camera’s vantage point. It must be like observing an ant colony and their habits. While completely different people, a lot of our learned patterns are completely the same. It's a new and interesting way to capture a scene and those lucky enough to be in Sweden can check out her solo show at the Galleri Andersson/Sandström in Umeå until May 18th, 2012. Everyone else can take a peek at her online gallery here!