A Conversation with Saskia Baden

Series: Un Earth

Solo Show on view September 19 - 26, 2021

Kahiah Polidore: What is your background? How does it inform your art?

Saskia Baden: I am an only child, and my father is a photographer. I grew up around photography my whole life, so it became a language that I learned the value of pretty early on. And as an only child, creativity as a means to make meaning out of solitude became really paramount.

Kahiah Polidore: What was your process with compiling this body of work?

Saskia Baden: My process in making Un Earth was a combination of being out in the landscape with my 4x5 camera and being home alone making self-portraits. Taking my camera out into the liquid landscape of the Pacific Northwest and finding textures and topographies that I felt connected to and felt reflected a certain internal landscape of the body that I could not otherwise describe, allowed me to create a kind of imagined anatomy that then informed my self-portraits, and vice-versa.

Kahiah Polidore: What artist inspires your work?

Saskia Baden: Recently I have been most inspired by the project Another Water by Roni Horn. Her use of writing in combination with imagery of water was deeply inspirational for me. Another Water changed my relationship not only to image and text but also to land and water.

Kahiah Polidore: Is your work influenced by a place, if so where and how?

Saskia Baden: This body of work is deeply connected to living in the Pacific Northwest and the liquidity that it always offers. Living in the wetness of that land allowed me to engage and recognize a certain liquidity of my own female body that I was unable, or resistant to, embrace before.

Kahiah Polidore: What materials are vital to your creating process?

Saskia Baden: Privacy is vital to my creative process. Not necessarily for the duration of the image-making process, but solitude and private space is essential to my ability to feel creative freedom--whether it be making images alone in my apartment or spending hours alone in the darkroom. And of course, film and darkroom chemistry are crucial to my practice. My process is rooted in the analog process that allows my hands to be physically in contact with my images throughout, I need that tactile relationship with my images.

Kahiah Polidore: How has your practice evolved over time?

Saskia Baden: I think the main way that my practice has evolved over time is having more of a fluency in subtly and trusting the image to speak for itself. I used to have a real tendency to be really heavy-handed in my image-making. And now, I still make really heavy-handed images, but they have become a part of a process to get to the real image I am trying to make, rather than the final destination.

Kahiah Polidore: Where can people find you on social media?

Saskia Baden: @liquid_damage

Kahiah Polidore: How do you offer your work for sale?

Saskia Baden: I sell silver gelatin prints and people can email me at badensaskia@gmail.com to inquire about prints