Carola Bartz – Northern California, USA/????, Germany
I am a native of Germany, having lived in that country for slightly more than 40 years before moving to the States with my husband and daughter in 2001.
Photography has always been an important part of my life, ever since I got a Kodak Instamatic for my 10th birthday – square prints in black and white with a white frame. I eventually upgraded to color prints (still in the white frame), but over the years I got pretty frustrated with the limitations of this camera. Finally, at the age of 20, I got my first SLR, a Nikon EM, that became my companion for the following almost 25 years until it silently died. In 2008, I changed to a digital SLR and Canon, so that my husband (who already owned a Canon) and I could share lenses. Digital photography opened up a completely new world to me and has become an exciting learning experience. I no longer use the camera to just record memories of travels or special occasions, but it has become a companion in everyday life, a voice for the details in life. I’m a true believer of natural light and turn on the flash only in hopeless light-situations. Nature is my biggest inspiration that holds new surprises for me over and over again.
I’ve always wanted to be a professional photographer, but my Dad had other plans for me. I was the only one of his children who actually passed the German high school final exam and he was dreaming of an academic life for his youngest daughter. Obedient and without much self-confidence I headed off to university, earning my master’s degree in both Chinese Studies and English Literature. Joined the working world after that, made my way through different jobs without truly enjoying any of them. I was living for the weekends and vacations, when I travelled and visited many countries, camera in hand. And I wrote and wrote and wrote, pouring my heart and soul into my journals, short stories and pretty bad poems.
Rather late in life I married and had my daughter. Three years later, we realized our dream of living in a foreign country and moved to Northern California, thanks to my husband’s work. Here, I re-discovered the artistic side in myself which had been dormant since 10th grade. I plunged into the world of scrapbooking – combining photography with design and words was a wonderful outlet. I worked in a scrapbook store for five years and enjoyed the creative environment. A friend introduced me to rubber stamping; from there it was only a short way to mixed media art, almost always accompanied by my photography. I teach classes in paper crafting (and German in the spring) that I thoroughly enjoy. For a long time I was reluctant to start a blog of my own because I wasn’t confident in being capable of writing in a language other than German – until finally I just dove in and created “carola bARTz” (http://carolabartz.blogspot.com/) – and it has become a source of wonderful enrichment in my life.
And now I am here at Vision and Verb – what an honor! I am excited to be one of the collaborators.