Karin Hillmer

Karin Hillmer (born circa 1955) is a German–American photographer and mixed‑media artist whose collage‑based images weave together history, technology, and surreal narrative. Raised in Germany, she first experimented with paper collages before studying French and English at university. A stint in Brussels and then London deepened her engagement with the visual arts, and in the early 1980s she relocated to New York to pursue a Bachelor of Arts in Art History at SUNY Purchase. There she supplemented her studies with painting, drawing, and black‑and‑white photography, laying the groundwork for her signature style.

In the late 1980s Hillmer began layering fragmented images on glass plates—combining watercolor, cut‑out figures, and found text—to create unexpected reflections and multidimensional surfaces. Working initially in monochrome, she embraced color in the 1990s, using ultrachrome archival inks to produce richly hued prints. Her compositions blend Renaissance motifs with genetic and technological iconography, yielding enigmatic, humorous scenes that she describes as “surreality”—a collision of avant‑garde invention and art‑historical reference.

Hillmer’s work has been shown internationally, with solo exhibitions in Germany, France, and the United States, and is held in private and public collections worldwide, including the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut. A perpetual storyteller, she continues to push the boundaries of digital photography and mixed media, transforming philosophical and scientific ideas into visually arresting, multilayered narratives.