Friedl Kubelka is an Austrian photographer, filmmaker and visual artist born in London, England in 1946. Her photographic practice has been attributed to a 20th-century movement known as Feminist Actionism or Viennese Actionism. Kubelka's photographic works sometimes focus on accentuating temporality, seriality and the body.
Biography
Friedl Kubelka was born in London, England as Friedl Bondy, she then relocated with her family to East Berlin and later to Vienna, where she spent most of her childhood. Her parents were forced to leave Austria due to their political views. Friedl began taking photographs at the age of twelve after receiving a box camera as a gift from her father in 1958. At age sixteen, her photographic interests shifted to people, faces, and bodies. From 1965 to 1969, Kubelka began making her first films at the Graphic Instruction and Research Institute in Vienna. After obtaining a diploma in commercial photography in 1971, she opened a professional photo studio that operated in Vienna until 1997. Friedl's films often include a cast of family members, friends, colleagues and sometimes male strangers. In Kubelka's Year's Portraits series, a project begun in 1972, she photographs herself daily over the period of a year, repeating the process every five years. In 1978, she married Peter Kubelka, Austrian filmmaker, theoritician, co-founder of the Austrian Film Museum and Anthology Film Archives, and changed her name from Friedl Bondy to Friedl Kubelka. On 21 October 1978, she gave birth to Louise Kubelka. Friedl began photographing her daughter during the first week of her life and continued until Louise turned eighteen, calling the series Louise Anna Kubelka.
Vom Gröller is a professional image-maker, not a commercial one, yet professional in the sense that she is and has been a photographer and filmmaker for over 40 years, not to mention one of Austria's great, if profoundly unrecognized, artists. Traditionally one would say, vom Gröller's work specializes in portraiture, but more accurately the artist's prolific practice is one of intimate encounters, which capture and seize upon elongated moments and brief experiences that refuse to relinquish their fleetingness. – Andréa Picard
In 1990, Kubelka founded the Friedl Kubelka School for Artistic Photography in Vienna. The School was the first devoted exclusively to artistic photography in Austria. In 2006, she founded the School Friedl Kubelka for Independent Film, dedicated to the art of analog filmmaking. The School for Independent Film has featured guests and teachers including Ken Jacobs, Robert Beavers, Peter Weibel, Oona Mosna, Kenneth Anger, Peter Tscherkassky, Eve Heller, James Benning, and Mark Webber. The school is now directed by the Austrian filmmaker and artist, Philipp Fleischmann.
