MOSCOW.- In her early works, Mona Breede often chose public spaces that were artworks in their own right. She watched how human beings moved, how they reacted to each other and to the surrounding space. Today she is mostly interested in people and places. As a photographer, Mona Breede has a keen and sensitive eye. Her works, being so expressive, interpret the reality and put their mark on it.

Mona Breede says: “I want my photos to touch those who look at them. I want the viewer to constantly return to them and to experience something new and unknown every time. This very goal rules the whole process of creating photography. That’s why, to my mind, it doesn’t matter how and at what particular moment I interfere with the making of my photos.

Apart from the background, light is very important for me. I was always interested in extreme conditions when light dictates the rules, a powerful and changing light with its inherent contrasts. The time that I want to show in my pictures is not winter with its heavy sky but bright sun, dawn hours, light and shade.”

Mona Breede was born in Kiel (Germany) in 1968. In 1988-1989, she was intern at the photography department of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg. Then she studied photography in Munich, at the Bayeriche Staatslehranstalt für Photographie, and at the Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung de Karlsruhe, under Rolf Sachsse and Thomas Struth. In 2001-2002, Mona Breede was student at the Karsruhe Merkurakademie.

In 2007, after living in Chicago for a while, Mona Breede went to Asia and Russia and returned with new marvelous photographic series representing Shanghai, Moscow, and St Petersburg. These works of latest years will be on view in Russia for the first time: at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (from January 28 till February 15, 2009) and at the State Center of Photography in St Petersburg (from April 3 till May 31, 2009).