Vita

NICOLA HACKL-HASLINGER (*1974) is an Austrian artist working at the intersection of photography and material-based image-making. Her dual expertise in photography and goldsmithing provides the foundation for a distinctive practice in which the photographic image is transformed through material, surface, and gesture.

Her work explores nature, perception, memory, and the passage of time, with a particular sensitivity to the relationship between the visible world and inner experience, and to humanity’s connection with the natural world.

Hackl-Haslinger’s engagement with photography began at an early age. She took her first photographs at the age of five and later studied at the HBLA für Künstlerische Gestaltung in Linz, where analogue photography and darkroom practice became formative to her artistic development. After graduating, she trained as a goldsmith and silversmith, developing expertise in material, surface, precision, and craftsmanship. In 1999, she was awarded the Austrian Künstlerpunze (Artistic Hallmark) and subsequently worked independently as a goldsmith and jewellery maker.

She later returned her primary focus to photography and completed advanced studies at the Prager Fotoschule Österreich in Linz, graduating with honours in 2011. From 2012 to 2016, she taught available-light and portrait photography as well as the history of portrait photography at the school.

Hackl-Haslinger works with contemporary and alternative photographic processes, incorporating materials such as 24 karat gold, palladium, aluminium, sheet metal, wire, and leaf metal. Her use of metal extends the photographic image beyond the conventional print, exploring surface, materiality, and process. In 2016, she developed a process enabling her to produce photogravures directly onto 24 karat gold leaf.

Her work has been nominated for the Peace Award St. Leopold in 2016 and 2018. She has collaborated with Oscar®-winning composer, producer, and pianist Volker Bertelmann (Hauschka), creating photographic works for his albums What If and A Different Forest. In 2019, she established the ongoing artistic partnership albapura with composer and 3D artist Peter Manhartsberger. With author Barbara Bullock-Wilson, she created Swan – A True Life Fairy Tale.

Her first monograph, Beyond Time, was published in 2023. In 2024, she was selected as a Photolucida Critical Mass Top 200 Finalist and received the Maine Media Scholarship Award.

Hackl-Haslinger’s photographs are held in private and institutional collections in Austria and internationally, including the permanent collections of Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Nordico Stadtmuseum Linz, the Art Collection of Upper Austria, Schlossmuseum Linz – Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum Angerlehner, Thalheim, Stiftsmuseum Klosterneuburg – the Gallery of Modern Art at Klosterneuburg, the Erwin Hauser Collection, the Paula Tognarelli Collection, Anton Bruckner Private University Linz, ESA – European Space Agency, Paris, Museum Haus der Natur – Vega Observatory Salzburg, and the Austrian National Library.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

My artistic practice moves between observation and intuition, between the visible and the hidden layers of perception. Working across photography and material-based image-making, I draw on the connection between goldsmithing and photography to develop a visual language in which material sensitivity meets photographic precision.

Photography is my point of departure. I often transform the photographic image through 24 karat gold, palladium, pigment, and pastels. Through layering, obscuring, revealing, and reshaping, the image moves beyond representation.

What begins as an observation of the external world becomes a space in which perception and inner experience intersect. Attentive to latent moods, subtle moments, and what lies beneath the immediately visible, I seek to bring into focus what remains just beyond the surface. I try to get to the bottom of things—not only technically, but also in a psychological and symbolic sense. Through a restrained palette and formal precision, I create images in which inner and outer realities enter into dialogue.

Nature is a recurring presence in my work. I am drawn to its fragility, transience, and continual transformation. Rather than depicting a particular place, I seek to evoke an atmosphere or a state of being. Nature, memory, and the passage of time become points of departure for exploring subtle states of perception and the relationship between the visible world and inner experience.

At the centre of my practice is a movement from the reproducible to the singular, from the optical to the material, and from observation to experience. The layers within the work invite sustained looking, allowing different levels of meaning to emerge gradually rather than presenting a fixed reading.

My works seek to create moments of stillness, silence, and attention - a space in which the viewer can pause, look closely, and become attentive to what might otherwise remain unseen.

In the smallest details, a whole world reveals itself.

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed, looks into his own soul.

Henri Cartier-Bresson