Eckart Bartnik lives and works in Wiesbaden, Germany. Following a career in biological research, he has devoted himself to analogue and digital photography since the early 1980s. His work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions and published in newspapers, magazines, and specialist publications. In 2025, he was nominated for the Prix Pictet. He is a member of the German Photographic Society (DGPh).

 

Artist Statement

I am interested in states of transition where certainties begin to falter and new spaces of experience emerge. I see photography as a medium that allows these transitions to become perceptible.

My work unfolds between two complementary approaches: Abstraction and Reflection. They are not opposites, but two different ways of pursuing the same artistic inquiry.

In my abstract works, I transform nature into colour, structure, and surface. Familiar scales dissolve as the microcosm and the macrocosm meet on the level of form. These images create visual spaces in which perception loses its certainty and seeing becomes an act of exploration.

Under the title Reflection, my focus shifts to the relationship between people, objects, and their environment. Landscapes, artefacts, and cultural traces become condensations of history, memory, and the present. Rather than offering explanations, these works reveal fractures, overlaps, and hidden relationships. They explore the in-between—those states of transition in which our perception of reality begins to shift.