Leica Picture of the Year

The German photographer’s most recent series is dedicated to nature: “In the long line of my projects, this is the first time that there are no people to be seen. Yet the main theme that characterizes my work has remained: change, transience,” Koelbl (*1939) says, speaking about the series that she has been putting together for almost ten years now. The motif that has been selected as Leica Picture of the Year 2024 does a wonderful job of demonstrating this approach: the shapes, colours and structures of the plants become visible in close-up, appearing mysterious, magical and abstract in the camera’s frame. Captured in the process of wilting, Koelbl’s precise compositions give the plants a whole new level of reality and perception. Another beauty emerges during the process of fading – nothing remains as it is. “A kind of visual archaeology that overlaps or even collides with the images or ideas we think we know,” the photographer muses. “The present and the past flow into each other. And in reappearance lies the future.”