Carsten zooms in on time and space in Kilbaha

MORE than a decade ago, Carsten Krieger and his wife, Ina, packed their belongings and hit the road. Swapping their careers as paediatric nurses in Stuttgart, Germany for a new home on the isolated westerly tip of Clare required guts and imagination. Their families and friends were not convinced that they would last long in Kilbaha.

 

“Most of them promised us that we’d be back after two years,” Carsten laughed.
Before moving, he had worked in a bone marrow transplantation ward. “Looking back on the decade I spent working with terminally ill children, I can only say it changed my life. Once you held the hand of a dying five-year-old, you start looking at things differently,” he reflected.
While Ina nurses in Kilrush, these days Carsten makes a living as a full-time photographer.

“What sold Kilbaha to us was my first holiday with my wife. We were cycling around Clare and we ended up in Kilkee on a wet and stormy day. The lady in the B&B directed us out to the Cliff Walk. From that day on, we were sold to the place,” he told The Clare Champion in what was a typically wet and windy West Clare winter afternoon.

Originally from Southern Germany, Carsten met his Berlin-born wife, while working in the hospital in Stuttgart.
“After almost 10 years working, we decided we had enough and it was time for a change. We both wanted to go abroad anyway. We had the Ireland connection at that stage so we just decided to come over here and see what happened,” he explained.
The move coincided with Carsten’s decision to work as a full-time freelance photographer.

“It became a full-time career the moment we came over here. Before that, I had a life-long interest in photography. I started to try to get a second income from it in Germany but with a full-time job, it just didn’t work out. We said this is the chance. We’ve started a new life so why not start a new career as well?” was his reasoning at the time.

Perhaps the creative gene comes from his late grandfather who was a landscape painter.
“I remember vividly rambling through the local forests and meadows of my hometown in Southern Germany, camera around my neck. Most of the time, however, photography was only an excuse to get outside and chase after all kinds of wildlife. More often than not, the exposed film ended up in some drawer, undeveloped. Experiencing nature and enjoying the process of framing a shot was all I wanted.
Only in my late teens I discovered that a picture can be very powerful and that the right image at the right time can actually change things. Through the works of the late Fritz Poelking, Germany’s godfather of nature photography, and the American photographer Jim Brandenburg, I started to take my own photography more seriously and see it as a possible career path,” he explained.

However, once photography became his full-time occupation, Carsten held a less romantic view of his new day job.
“It’s different if you have to make a living from it. With every job to some degree you have to do what the client dictates. The first year in Kilbaha was more like a constant holiday. It took about a year, a year and a half until I got into the mood of working freelance,” he said.
Living between Kilbaha village and Loop Head lighthouse is as isolated as it gets in this county with trips to Kilkee or Kilrush sometimes hazardous.

“At times, it’s a bit nerve-wracking especially two years ago in the ice and snow. It took us a day to shop in Kilrush, between getting there and back again. But in a way, I think I really learned how to properly photograph in Ireland because at the time in Germany, it was probably on a weekend away or on holiday that I took photographs. There was never the time to concentrate on it. Then when I had all the time I wanted, it kind of flourished,” he feels.

Getting to know local people wasn’t easy in the couple’s early years in the peninsula. That changed though when their children reached school-going age. “We kind of became a part of the community after we had children at playschool and pre-school. But before that, we were kind of isolated but it was to some degree our own fault because we weren’t going out much or going to pubs,” Carsten said.

He is not certain whether photography is art or craft – somewhere in between perhaps?  “Photography is borderline between craft and art. Some people say it’s not art at all, it’s just documentary. Then there are others who accept it as an art form. Personally, I think it’s probably a bit of both. It depends how you practise it,” he maintains.

Carsten has been involved in the production of six photographic books since moving to Kilbaha. The last book was Ireland’s Coast.
“When I started on that project, it was planned as another landscape book with maybe a bit of wildlife. Then my publisher kind of pushed me into taking a bit of a wider approach. The first thing I did was follow the Sally O’Keeffe project in Querrin. From that, it took off and I photographed the sail maker down in Cork and the fishmonger’s in Howth. Before that. I could never really imagine myself photographing people,” he revealed.
Since settling in this country, Carsten believes his methods and outlook have altered radically.

“When I came over to Ireland, I very much saw myself as a landscape and wildlife photographer and wasn’t much interested in other subjects. Unfortunately, I allowed myself to settle in that comfort zone. Some three years ago, I came across the work of Canadian photographer Daryl Benson, which had a big impact and brought myself to experiment a bit more. I started shooting in black and white and took on architectural photography,” he noted.

Carsten recently commenced a new photographic project on the Burren in co-operation with the Burren Beo Trust.
“It’s is very exciting return to the place where I started to learn to be a professional photographer some 10 years ago. Also I have been working for the Tree Council of Ireland for the past 12 months for a book on Remarkable Trees of Ireland, which will be out this autumn,” he said.

Ironically, the isolation of life on the precipice of the Atlantic has aided Carsten Krieger in finding the time and space to develop his photographic skills and eke a living from what was once a mere pastime.