Ingrid Dorner (b. 1980, France) is a visual artist based in Munich, Germany, known for her evocative, surrealist-inspired photographic artworks. Working primarily in the darkroom, she transforms processed negatives into abstract compositions that explore themes of ephemerality, existentialism, and the interplay between humanity and nature.
For Ingrid, the darkroom operates as a space of alchemy, where experimental processes lead to images shaped as much by chance as by intention. Her practice involves chemically manipulating silver gelatin prints—eroding, staining, layering—to produce fluid and fractured surfaces that resemble decaying silhouettes, fragile figures, or spectral apparitions. Her visual language is poetic yet violent, capturing states of transformation where destruction becomes a path to creation.
Her major ongoing project, Liminal, is structured in chapters, each tracing a psychological and material journey through fragility, chaos, resistance, and reemergence. It is a visual and emotional exploration of threshold states—those in-between moments where the body, memory, and image drift, distort, and reform.
Dorner’s work has been shown in international institutions and fairs including Photo Basel (2025), Art Antwerp (2024), Prague Photo, Festival Photo Experimental (Barcelona), and Rueff Gallery / Purdue University (USA), among others. Her images have been featured in Photographica, Musée Magazine, Rüm Magazine, Loosen Art, and the critical publication Nos Paris Critiques (Naima Editions, 2025).
Her photographs from Liminal are currently available for consultation through In-dependance in collaboration with Ibasho Gallery (Antwerp), with whom she regularly participates in art fairs.
Ingrid Dorner was awarded the Passepartout Photo Prize and Annual Photography Award in New-York in 2023, and her work continues to gain recognition for its unique balance of experimental rigor and emotional depth. Through altered silver surfaces, she opens portals into vulnerable, volatile, and hauntingly beautiful inner landscapes.