Hanna Mattes | online portfolio
![In the Mood for Love](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/11_DSC9086HR_WEB.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, In the Mood for Love, 2018
c-print on alu-dibond, 10 × 70 cm
Hanna Mattes’ (b.1980, Munich, Germany) practice is one of innate multiplicity. Across her photographic works—and more recently, through her performative intervention, paintings and poetic collaborations—Hanna pieces together multiple points of view, as well as moments of action, to create dramatic multiverses.
Select works
![The Winner](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/fleetstreet_01_thewinner.1280x0.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, The Winner, 2009
c-print, 40 × 50cm
![Aquatic Antipode 15](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Horizontal_split_mirror_small.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 15, 2023
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm
![Steine #2](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/MAT_14_0008-LR.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, Steine #2, 2015
c-print, watercolour on negative, 160 × 200 cm
![Upheaval Dome](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/5-MAT_17_0002-HR-04_img046_Upheaval-Rim_kl_Utl-23_flat_pg26_WEB.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, Upheaval Dome, 2016 – 2017
analogue c-print, 163 × 200cm
Exhibitions and series
Aquatic Antipode
![(left) Aquatic Antipode 7; (right) Aquatic Antipode, 11](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DSC2913-1-scaled.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, (left) Aquatic Antipode 7; (right) Aquatic Antipode, 11, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Part of the larger body of work, titled Take Me to That Landscape (a publication project that also encompasses a musical album and texts by various authors), these analogue photographic works picture the horizon; the meeting of swathes of water and sky, bubbling. Looking at these scenes closely, it becomes apparent that these are not records of a singular place. Rather they are composites, seas and skies from elsewheres brought together to manufacture a sense of tranquillity. The artist’s hand and remnants of her assemblage process are visible upon the surfaces of these prints; alluding, perhaps, to the corporeality of the landscape both real and imagined, individual and collective. And in this way, these works speak poetically about a human desire for togetherness; about the gaps and the unseen distances overcome through collaboration.
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 9, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 10, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 11, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 13, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 1, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 3, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 4, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 5, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm and 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 6, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Aquatic Antipode 8, 2022
c-print, negative collage, 25 x 30 cm or 80 x 100 cm
Take Me to That Landscape
![](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Untitled-1.png)
Hanna Mattes
In Take Me to That Landscape spoken word and prose-poetry collide with experimental jazz music and nature sounds. The texts describe fantasies about sexuality, romance, touch, and transcendence. Both Ernst Reijseger and David Rothenberg added their respective musical interpretations.
Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape, 2022
[trailer] digital album
The Lunar System
![](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/18-Lauwer-070320-scaled.jpg)
Installation View
“The Lunar System was established as an innocent attempt to mythologize my life. It started when I was a teenager and my friends and I gave each other nicknames that related to the planets and stars in our galaxy. I was the moon and my best friend the sun. We still revolve around each other’s axis and my system kept growing during the course of my life. I never thought much of it and kept it mainly to myself until I stumbled upon the mythology of the Licanantaí, the indigenous people who have lived in the Atacama desert in Chile for more than 2000 years. Their mythology revolves around the array of volcanoes that borders the desert on the east. The sun and all the planets and stars rise behind it. They too play a vital role in the mythology. It reminded me of my own system and I started understanding it as a mythology as well.”
—Hanna Mattes
Hanna Mattes, Travelling Spirit Atacama, 2017, 2019
c-print, watercolour on paper
Hanna Mattes, Coyo de Atacama, Sunrise, 2017
c-print
Hanna Mattes, Valle de la Luna, Sunrise #2, 2017
c-print
Hanna Mattes, Licancabur Burning, 2019
c-print, watercolour on negative, 30 × 40 cm
Hanna Mattes, Atacama Burning Sky, 2017, 2019
c-print, watercolour on paper
Hanna Mattes, Kimal Burning, 2017, 2019
c-print, watercolour on paper
Hanna Mattes, Full Moon, yellow, 2019
c-print, watercolour on negative, 30 × 40 cm
Mexico City
![No Title (Mexican Women: Hanna)](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/hanna_bew_kl.1200x0.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Hanna), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
“During my residency at Casa Lü in Mexico City in 2021, I was interested in the subject matter of water and its political, economical and historical importance to Mexico and Mexico City. As part of it, I researched and compared the mythologies of the Aztec water deity Chalchiuhtlicue and the catholic Virgen Guadalupe. The latter, painted with a belt which symbolizes her pregnancy, stands for fertility just as Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of the horizontal waters and guardian of the newborn. Fertility and water are of course tightly connected not only in mythology but also in agriculture; to put it bluntly: without water (or women) we don’t exist. As part of this research, I photographed Mexican women in my surrounding and painted a colorful halo around them, alluding to the common catholic virgin representation. The results are intuitive portraits of modern Mexican women, conscious of their diverse heritage.”
—Hanna Mattes
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Nora), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Mariel), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Maria Jose), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Valerie), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Lissi), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Stef), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
Hanna Mattes, No Title (Mexican Women: Coco), 2021
c-print, watercolour on negative
Searching for the Cold Spot
![noe_stone_telling_041_20x30cm_eva_wuerdinger.1200x0](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/noe_stone_telling_041_20x30cm_eva_wuerdinger.1200x0.jpg)
Installation View
Searching for the Cold Spot carries us off into a magical world. In analogue photographs, Hanna captures meteorite craters, stones of cosmic origin, as well as breathtakingly filigreed minerals. She travelled through large parts of the USA on her search for craters that were created by the impact of meteorites. Here, her photographs—occasionally transformed through the use of watercolour—capture the mysteries and stunning relics without robbing them of their secrets or their fascination.
Hanna Mattes, Let's Stay Home [1], 2014
copper and oak wood, 50 × 38 × 50cm
Hanna Mattes, Upheaval Dome, 2016 – 2017
analogue c-print, 163 × 200cm
Hanna Mattes, Steine #2, 2015
c-print, watercolour on negative, 160 × 200 cm
Hanna Mattes, Barringer Crater, Arizona #3, 2016
c-print, 160 × 200cm
Hanna Mattes, Steine #10, 2016
c-print, watercolor on negative, 30 × 40 cm
Hanna Mattes, Steine #8, 2015
c-print, watercolour on negative, 160 × 200 cm
Hanna Mattes, Steine #6, 2015 – 2017
c-print, watercolour on negative, 162.5 × 203cm
Hanna Mattes, Steine #12, 2016
c-print, watercolor on negative, 160 × 200 cm
Supernatural
![Supernatural Series](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/HannaMattes03-scaled.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, Supernatural Series, 2014
digitized 16mm film, installation view, 00:01:00
Hanna Mattes, Supernatural #1, 2015
digitized 16mm film
00:01:00
Hanna Mattes, 2015
digitized 16mm film
00:01:00
Hanna Mattes, digitized 16mm film, 1 min, 2015 Supernatural #3, 2015
digitized 16mm film
00:01:00
Hanna Mattes, Supernatural #4, 2015
digitized 16mm film
00:01:00
Encounters
![bbre_20131026_acf_encounters_hm_9.1200x0](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/bbre_20131026_acf_encounters_hm_9.1200x0.jpg)
Installation View
Inspired by early photographers, spiritualists, and psychologists around 1900, these works document abandoned landscapes, where the apparently ‘natural’ merges—through analogue image manipulation—with supernatural manifestations, glowing spheres, and peculiar light phenomena. Here, Hanna employs a technique that was already used by fin de siècle photographers to ‘prove’ extraterrestrial and irrational phenomena, such as apparitions and auras. She produces superimpositions and collages, then retouches the negatives directly. By manipulating and displacing reality, these bizarre scenes challenge our rational perception of the material world and leave behind a sense of awe.
Hanna Mattes, Gartensonne (Encounters #4), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, L.A.U.F.O. (Encounters #5), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30cm
Hanna Mattes, 4 Suns (Encounters #19), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30cm
Hanna Mattes, Sterntaler (Encounters #15), 2013
c-print, 80 × 100 cm
Hanna Mattes, Mirror Mountain (Encounters #11), 2013
c-print, negative collage, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Venice Beach (Encounters #22), 2013
c-print, paint on negative, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Meteorite (Encounters #21), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Meteorite (Encounters #9), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Meteorite (encounters #7), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Meteorite (encounters #8), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Meteorite (Encounters #10), 2013
c-print, 24 × 30 cm
Day for Night
![Day for Night #15](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/MAT_11_0020-LR.png)
Hanna Mattes, Day for Night #15, 2011
c-print, 50 × 40 cm
For me photography is at its best when you don’t know whether it is photography or not. Enjoying the uncertainty, questioning the circumstances and subject presented before me, photographer Hanna Mattes ‘Nightscapes’ & ‘Day For Night’ series do exactly that. While inviting such an inquisitive response, Hanna’s images simultaneously offer beautiful landscapes crafted from vivid light sources and meandering forms, a successful combination so often strived for, but rarely achieved.
—Wandering Bears Blog
pre-2009 photographic series
Fleetstreet
Mapping My Hollywood
Hanna Mattes, Pacific Coast Highway, 2009
c-print, 30 × 40 cm
Hanna Mattes, Joshua Tree, 2009
c-print, 30 × 40cm
Hanna Mattes, Schussloecher (Encounters #13), 2013
c-print, paint on negative, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Headlights, 2008
c-print, 30 × 40 cm
Hanna Mattes, Flashlight, 2008
c-print, 24 × 30 cm
Hanna Mattes, Motel #1, 2009
c-print, 30 × 40 cm
Hanna Mattes, Gone with the wind, 2007
c-print, 30 × 40 cm
Hanna Mattes, Wild West, 2007
c-print, 140 × 200 cm
True Lies
Holiday in Italy
Publications
Take Me to That Landscape
![Take Me to That Landscape](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/take-me-to-that-landscape-cover.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape
publicaion
With images and poems by Hanna Mattes and including essays by Irmgard Emmelhainz and David Rothenberg that shed a light on two specific aspects of Take Me To That Landscape: the aquatic and the erotic.
David Rothenberg’s “Undersound”, describes his obsession with the tiniest of underwater sounds that finally brings him to the meaning of life. “Polyamorous Love Songs and Sexuality in the Pluriverse”, by Irmgard Emmelhainz, weaves Hanna’s poetry into the historic context of sexuality, eroticism and queer art since the 1960’s.
The featured photographic series Aquatic Antipode (Hanna Mattes, 2022), was made at the same time as the musical collaboration. It picks up on the sentiment of being far away from each other with no means of connecting in the real world. Every image is a collage of at least two different negatives of which one was always taken in a different country and sometimes continent than the other. The depicted swamps, ponds, oceans and aquatic zoo life collide mimicking a mirroring effect that doesn’t add up.
Link to Take Me to That Landscape teaser
Publisher: Living Stone Publishing
Dimensions: 14 x 24 cm
ISBN: 9783000745584
Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape
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Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape
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Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape
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Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape
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Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape
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Hanna Mattes, Take Me to That Landscape
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Stone
![Stone](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Stone-3-1.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, Stone
publication
The book celebrates the beauty of rocks, stones and pebbles. It shines a light on ordinary objects and questions the value we give to things. What determines the price of a stone is commonly based on beauty (its clarity, colour and cut), rarity, durability, demand, tradition and portability. Based on this logic, it could be said that any rock could be classified as a gemstone if it meets the above criteria. If they are presented like gemstones, perhaps they are?
Why is a mineral or a diamond, that can be bought in a store, more precious than a pebble found on a London street? Provided the latter is connected to a specific memory, place or time it could possibly have more meaning and thus (personal) value to us. Jung explains: “{We} have collected stones since the beginning of time and have apparently assumed that certain ones were the containers of the life-force with all its mystery.”
Publisher: Self Published, 2022
Author: Hanna Mattes, excerpts from C.G. Jung: Man and His Symbols (1964)
Photographer: Hanna Mattes, Louise West
Graphic Design: Louise West
Format: Handbound Riso print brochure
Size: 15 x 21 cm
Edition: 100 copies
The Lunar System
![The Lunar System](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/9.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, The Lunar System
publication
Published by: Deutscher Kunstverlag
Concept: Hanna Mattes, Belmacz, Harris Blondman
Text: Hanna Mattes Copy-editing: Linda Theodorou
Graphic Design: Studio Harris Blondman Lithography: Wolfgang Hückel
Printed: Tallina Raamatutrükikoja Oü, Tallin, Estonia
Hardcover, edition of 550
120 pages with 80 colour illustrations
20.4 x 33 cm
ISBN 978-3-947858-08-8
Hanna Mattes, The Lunar System
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Hanna Mattes, The Lunar System
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Hanna Mattes, The Lunar System
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Hanna Mattes, The Lunar System
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Hanna Mattes, The Lunar System
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Hanna Mattes, The Lunar System
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Searching for the Cold Spot
![Searching for the Cold Spot](https://belmacz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/0_HMATTES_SFTCS_LS.jpg)
Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
publication
In mythological accounts meteorites are described as magical bridges between heaven and earth. This reflects their remarkable property of bringing about both destruction and life. Depending on a meteorite’s size, its strike can be as powerful as an atomic bomb. It has the potential to destroy life and devastate the surrounding landscape. At the same time, we now know that meteorites were responsible for bringing water and amino acids – the main ingredients of human life – to the young planet Earth. The images in this book are analog photos of stones and craters taken over the course of three years. Hanna scrutinized the mineral collection of natural history museums in Harlem, Berlin, London and New York, selecting and recording specimens, and travelled to Upheaval Dome, Barringer Crater, Sunset Crater, and Ubehebe Crater to photograph these impact sites where meteorites struck long ago. She later transformed the negatives of meteorites using watercolors, creating images that merge painting and photography.
Published on the occasion of Hanna Mattes’ first UK exhibition Searching for the Cold Spot, Belmacz.
Published by Deutscher Kunstverlag
Concept: Hanna Mattes, Belmacz, Harris Blondman
Text: David Colosi (English)
Printed: Drukkerij Roelof, Enschede
120 pages with 80 colour illustrations
20.4 x 33 cm,
Hardcover
ISBN 978-3-422-07418-7
Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
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Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
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Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
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Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
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Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
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Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
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Hanna Mattes, Searching for the Cold Spot
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press and texts
exhibition history
Education. Hanna studied Fine Arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and Linguistics at Freie Universität zu Berlin.
Select exhibitions. 48 Hours Neukölln Cultural Festival, Heimathafen Neukölln, Berlin, Germany (2024); Wie es euch gefällt, ATELIERFRANKFURT e.V., Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2024); Women of the ’20s, Belmacz, London, UK (2023); Finally, SP2 Contemporary, Berlin (2023); Take Me To That Landscape, Heimathafen Neukölln, Berlin (2023); Vier mal Vier, Berlin Offgrid, Vienna (2023); State of Cling, Omstand, Arnhem, The Neatherlands (2022); WHO IS NOT A STRANGER, Casa Lü, Mexico (2021); Mom, I am a rich man, Kommunale Galerie Rathaus Johannisthal, Berlin (2021) Take Me To That Landscape, live online performance with David Rothenberg for K. Verlag at Printed Matter New York Art Book Fair (2021); 20×20, WEB, Berlin (2020); Cooking for the Apocalypse, curated by Jack Faber, Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki (2020); Three Pieces, Gallery Lauwer, The Hague (2020); The Lunar System, Earth Based Art Space, Zutphen (2020); Macrodoser, with Anna Steinert, Salon Gallery, Berlin (2019); B, Belmacz, London (2019); The Cosmic Sublime, curated by Lumen Studios, Pie Factory Margate, London (2019); Astronomia, Arte e Religione, with Lumen Residency in Atina, Italy (2018); Wild Encounters, curated by La Wayaka Current, Guest Projects, London (2018); If I Was Your Girlfriend – A Jam, Belmacz, London (2018); Searching for the Cold Spot, Belmacz, London (2017); Collectivism – Collectives and their quest for value, Foam, Amsterdam (2017); On the Distant Horizon, curated Joe Wolek, BLAM, Los Angeles (2016); InterKontinental, Belmacz, London (2016); Carbon Content, curated by Marc Philip van Kempen, Kreuzbergpavillion, Berlin (2015); The Nutcracker, Belmacz, London (2014); Circus TM, Belmacz, London (2014); Encounter, with Pim Leenen, ACF – Amsterdam Centre for Photography (2013); Light / Colours, Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography, Amsterdam (2013); Kleider machen Leute, Galerie im Saalbau, Berlin (2013); She Views Herself – Emerging Women Artists and the Self-Portrait, Bank Oddo, Paris (2012); When The Night Falls…, KiK – Kunsthuis Kolderveen (2012) Day for Night, LMCC, New York (2011); To The Netherlands, Diplomat Gallery, Philadelphia (2011); Digitaal? Analoog!, Huis Marseille – Museum voor Photography, Amsterdam (2010); Theater & Fotografie, Galerie Kampl, Munich (2010); Mapping My Hollywood, Amsterdam Centre for Photography (2010); Fleetstreet – Tagebuch eines Theaters, Fleetinsel, Hamburg (2009); True Lies, Kunsthaus Essen (2009).
Alongside her solo practice, Hanna is an active member of two collectives: Dead Darlings, an anonymous art auction founded in Amsterdam in 2005 which explores the complex love triangle between artist, artwork, and collector; and femxphotographers.org, a platform dedicated to the promotion of fine art photographers to expose and deconstruct the dominance of a male gaze.
Hanna lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam.