Interview: Greta Schnall
Luca Curci talks with Greta Schnall, WINNER of the ARTIST OF THE MONTH – APRIL 2025.

Greta Schnall was born in Bavaria, Germany, and has lived for many years in the picturesque region of Chiemgau, near Lake Chiemsee. Alongside her main profession as a co-therapist, she finds a creative and fulfilling balance in photography and digital image processing.

Since 2006, she has specialized in nature photography, with a particular focus on macro imagery. Over time, she expanded her artistic scope to include landscape photography. In 2008, she began exploring digital image processing, a practice she has continued to develop intensively. Around 2010, she turned her attention to architectural photography—a field in which she continues to expand her techniques and visual language to this day.

Greta is particularly fascinated by how “ordinary” buildings can be transformed into something extraordinary through imagination and creative editing—much like many aspects of life. Her work demonstrates how simple, often monotonous architecture can be reimagined into dynamic, dreamlike visuals, offering a glimpse into alternate, often more inspiring architectural worlds.

Deeply influenced by cubism, surrealism, and architecture, Greta strives to bring these elements together in her work. Between 2013 and 2018, she held three solo exhibitions in Germany. Since 2019, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions across the globe, including in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Dubai, Japan, China, Spain, France, Sweden, the United States, Hungary, Greece, and the Caribbean Islands.

Luca Curci – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most?
Greta Schnall – I am a self-taught artist. At first, I focused exclusively on nature macro and landscape photography. But soon after, I also became fascinated with digital editing, which I soon found particularly appealing in combination with architectural motifs.
My main focus is on imaginative forms in nature, graphic forms in general, and architecture. In recent years, I have been most impressed and influenced by photographs of skyscrapers and the skylines of the world’s metropolises. I wanted to try creating similar but more imaginative motifs myself.

LC – How much has the city/country in which you grew up/born affected your work as an artist?
GS – Here, our paradisiacal nature and landscape have influenced me most in terms of my nature motifs. Here, too, one often finds graphic structures, which create something like a kind of natural architecture. For example, since the area is rich in water, there are many wooden walkway motifs that combine nature and graphics in one image.

LC – Do you use art to express something in particular? Is it your medium of expression?
GS – My art is intended to show that even the simplest buildings can be designed in an exciting way with enough imagination, and that this process is therefore also possible in most other areas of life and can often even be implemented in reality.

LC – How do you feel when you see your work completed?
GS – I often feel initially positively surprised by the desired result, and then satisfied to have created a new, unique work. Because my process (editing steps) are secret.

LC – What are you currently working on?
GS – I’m currently working on rather gentle graphic motifs that are in a kind of movement in the picture.

LC – Is there an unrealised or unrealisable project, even a crazy one, that you would like to work on?
GS – I would like to combine my motifs with light art motifs. That is, combinations of my works with artistically designed lighting.

LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
GS – For the most part, it’s wonderful, since we have so many means of expression available these days, such as in digital art. It’s also challenging, because the art market is quite saturated, but on the other hand, people often have little interest in art in these turbulent times—even though art plays a particularly important role in society right now.