Kristian Schuller

Kristian Schuller (1970) came to Germany from Transylvania, Romania with his family when he was seven years old. As the son of a dramaturge and director, and an art teacher, he grew up near a stage and in a circle of various creative influences. The theatre had taught him that you need media to convey fantasies, so he acquired the necessary tools in his young teens: a camera and a sewing machine.

At the age of twenty-seven, he went to the University of the Arts in Berlin and studied photography under F. C. Gundlach and fashion design under Vivienne Westwood. Although he eventually decided to pursue a career as a photographer after graduation, both disciplines continue to define his artistic identity. Not only because he first worked as a fashion photographer in Paris and London, shooting for Vogue, Elle, Tatler, and Harper's Bazaar, but also because he combines fashion and photography in his own projects.

His wife, Peggy, is an art director and fashion designer and has been working with Kristian since they met in Vivienne Westwood's class. Her designs play a key role in his portraits, and his photographs involve cardboard boxes, plastic tarps, raw boards, tree stumps, wilted leaves from the street, and finger paints.

After years in Paris and New York, Kristian Schuller is now based in Berlin with his family.