I am Dr. Caroline von Courten: photo theorist, programme developer, and artistic director of Der Greif.

At heart, I am an essayist. What drives me is an inexhaustible curiosity about everything that shapes the way we see, think & engage: our visual habits, our worldviews, our ways of making sense. This curiosity runs through all my work as writer, researcher, teacher, curator, editor, and programme maker, and has led me to commit in everything to poetic politics.   
  
"Eine Haltung zum Leben, in welcher ein fragendes Denken und ein kritischer Sinn sich die Waage halten, wenn der Mensch poetisch lebe und dadurch seine Verbundenheit mit den Lebensbedingungen der Erde vor der Entfremdung und Tyrannei der menschlichen Welt schütze." Stefan Hertmans - Die Suche nach der Gegenwart (2024)

With a background in Visual Culture Studies (University of Utrecht & Monash University Melbourne) and an MA in Photographic Studies (Leiden University), I devoted myself to a critical thinking on images – not as a specialisation, but as a lens on everything else. My doctoral dissertation at Leiden University (The Photographic Surface – Between Substances and Spaces, 2023) deepened this.

Over fifteen years, I have led international cultural organisations, held editorial responsibility for major publications, including Foam International Photography Magazine, conceived exhibitions, accompanied emerging practitioners, and developed formats that create space for genuine thinking. Currently as Artistic Director of Der Greif and as a lecturer at the bachelor program CAMERA ARTS at HSLU Lucerne, I experience daily: the best things happen when intellectual depth and real human encounter meet while talking about images.

From this conviction, a new initiative has grown: Ins Blaue – collective explorations at the intersection of culture, politics, and nature, taking not-knowing as a starting point for creation. The belief behind it: the urgent questions of our time can only be addressed in genuine dialogue, not in parallel monologues. A space for exchange under the blue sky in the middle of Bavarian nowhere, my homebase. Interested to join?