Misha Hollenbach


AVAILABLE WORKS

“The Rainbow Book was a collection of essays and illustration focusing on the spectrum published in 1975. In its introduction, it states “The life of a rainbow is so momentary, so transitory, so fleeting; the way a day-dream is, or a kiss, or the shape of the sound of ecstasy.” It is a fitting comparison for Misha Hollenbach’s images. Saturated in colour, taken at moment of accident, embedded with nature, exuding the sensory and the psychedelic. When questioned what is a rainbow, Rutherford Platt wrote in 1975 “Rainbows exist only when there are eyes and minds to see them”.

The meeting point between magical and the aesthetic originally emerged at turn of the 20th century. It was the subject of Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater’s iconic esoteric book ‘Thought-Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation’ published in 1901. The illustrated book had a huge effect on thinkers and artists in the 20th century from Rudolf Steiner to Hilma Af Klimt to Paul Klee. Charles Leadbeater had fused Tantric concept of chakras which he had studied in India, this with his own take on clairvoyance.

“Every definite thought produces a double effect — a radiating vibration and a floating form,” they wrote. “Every shade of feeling — devotional, intellectual, or other — has its own distinctive coloring, sound, and form… As the power of thought grows, so does the color of the thought-form become more brilliant and luminous.” According to the Theosophical writers, love, anger, peace, goodness and joy all created own atmospheric effects that materialised in aura. Here thought was transformed into effect.

There is something inherently alchemical in the creation of photographs. A mechanical button is pressed, chemicals transform material or pixels are fixed into a simulacrum of reality. Here alchemy lives in the edges of accident, science and technology. The transformation of feeling and emotion into a still moment. These images are a way of looking into the light. This is a document of chaos and calm by equal measure. A letting go.”

Words by Francesca Gavin