TransMutations – the Alchemy of the Self
Opening: 31 October 2025, 6 pm // Atelier Yves Sucksdorff, Berlin
On 31 October 2025, photographer Nadine Dinter will open her latest exhibition, TransMutations, at Atelier Yves Sucksdorff in Berlin. This series is Dinter’s homage to the sculptures she has photographed around the world since the late 1990s, exploring the visual and spiritual fusion of transient human bodies with immortal statues. In a discourse of reflection and meditation, eight works are presented in an ethereal installation, offering an intimate first glimpse into this long-term project.
Since 1991, Nadine Dinter has been capturing the raw stillness of form and flesh. While she began with portraiture, her practice soon evolved into an expansive archive of statue and cemetery photographs. From graveyards in her hometown of Berlin to legendary sites like Père Lachaise in Paris, and burial grounds in New York, New Orleans, and Mauritius, the necropolis has become her studio and sculpture her muse.
Yet she is not interested in mere photographic documentation. Instead, she seeks to capture a distinct mood – an almost tender, human aura within the sculptures and their apparent vitality – emphasized through carefully chosen lighting situations, dramatized perspectives, and the shifting atmosphere of the seasons. The object becomes the subject. Her haunting work blurs the line between presence and absence, beauty and decay, opening space for something entirely new. Her images are true to the spirit of transmutation – a term that, in its classical scientific sense, encompasses the transformation of matter, yet in a broader sense also evokes the profound alchemical metamorphosis of a person.
Inspired by this philosophy and rooted in her second passion, body photography, the TransMutations series fuses sculptural images with nudes in auratic stagings that evoke spirit, energy, and metamorphosis. Women’s bodies seem to emerge from the statues, entering the space and inviting viewers to forge a unique connection. This expanded dimension symbolizes detachment from the present, a shift in perspective, and ultimately the transition from being to becoming.
