OliverAbraham

Oliver Abraham was born in Cologne in 1972. Between 2001 and 2004 he completed his photography studies at the school Fotografie am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin as a master student of Prof. Arno Fischer, and has worked since with an 8×10-inch large-format camera.

Since 2013 Abraham has been building a continuing series of portraits of journalists, activists, philosophers and artists who engage with surveillance, press freedom and political dissent — subjects who, across generations and disciplines, pursue a shared commitment to human rights and freedom of expression. The portrait sessions take place almost exclusively in natural light, with the notable exception of his portrait of Julian Assange, made under artificial light inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The project's earliest images, of Taryn Simon in 2009 and Patti Smith in 2010, began as a more general series of artist portraits before political events — the Greek debt crisis, Edward Snowden's disclosures, the refugee crisis, Brexit, the Trump presidency — drew Abraham toward journalists, activists and public intellectuals confronting these upheavals. His sitters include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Seymour Hersh, Yanis Varoufakis and Julian Assange, among many others.

The analogue method and the deliberate reduction to black and white and a limited stock of film allow an unfiltered, close representation of these personalities, functioning as a counterweight to the digital flood of images that otherwise defines their public presence. Abraham lives and works in Cologne.