First Look: Birthe Piontek

Birthe Piontek, Front Yard, c-print, 20" x 20", 2008. From the Yukon series The Idea of North.

German-born photographer Birthe Piontek is always looking for the individual — people who leave the beaten path in their quest for self-discovery. She’s a fan of oddball film director David Lynch, whose TV series Twin Peaks influenced her recent Idea of the North portfolio. “I’m drawn to the quirky, interesting odd characters that are at the end of the road,” she says. “I also love the atmosphere Lynch creates. It’s the whole idea of telling stories and creating atmospheres — of giving little hints instead of telling the whole thing.”

Some of her first work inspired by Canada (Piontek moved to Vancouver in 2005), Idea of the North was created in the Yukon while she was in residence at Dawson’s Klondike Institute of Art and Culture. In the pictures, she captures an old man with overgrown mutton-chop sideburns and bristling eyebrows, a dog sitting on a wooden box clearly stained with territorial markings, an androgynous young man dressed in a pinstriped suit with magenta hair, a rough wooden stairway leading to the door of a dwelling lit up at night with two simple strands of Christmas lights, a section of animal hide, stretched out to dry, still pink and blood-specked, and a junkyard of discarded appliances sitting in the snow, set against an overcast sky and mountainside.

Represented by a handful of galleries outside Canada, including Charles Guice in Berkeley, California, and Jen Bekman in New York, Piontek has shot editorial photography for major Canadian and international magazines, and has exhibited throughout Germany, and had a few U.S. shows. It’s just the beginning. “Lots of good things have happened,” she says. “I’m proud of what I achieved but I’m always aware of things I want to accomplish. The recognition encourages me to stick to it.”