Kristopher Grunert’s unique and compelling photographs excel in the realms of corporate communications, advertising, editorial and fine art. The commercial feeds the fine art and the fine art inspires the commercial. Kristopher is resourceful, intuitive and highly perceptive – with a talent for solving visual problems and carrying his vision and that of his client through from start to finish. Regardless of the circumstances or the subject he is presented with, he calmly and cleverly finds ways to show the beauty that exists there, even in the most unlikely places. His upbringing has granted him a strong spatial sense and the ability to see and capture lines, atmosphere, movement and light.
The first eighteen years of Kristopher’s life were spent on his family’s farm in rural Saskatchewan where his family has seeded and harvested the same land for over 125 years. The farmhouse was surrounded by an unobstructed horizon with endless skies and straight roads. Enduring an extreme environment – from arctic cold winters to desert hot summers – cultivated in Kristopher an understanding of our impact on the land and how to work with the earth’s cycles. Growing up against the backdrop of the heavy machinery, tractors, trucks, and steel structures; the symmetry of these tools was complex and repetitive and impacted his way of looking at the world. In the winters his dad worked as a boiler engineer. He would often go to work with him and soon became fascinated by the pipes, lights, gauges and dials; the inner working of the building’s heating system.
Years later, while studying photography in Vancouver he spent nights exploring industrial landscapes. He found himself enthralled by gritty industrial plants; smokestacks churning out endless fumes, concrete cityscapes encased in fog and bathed in the saturated tones of the streetlights. With his 1972 Hasselblad camera, he used long exposures of 10 to 20 seconds, which allowed him time to visualize the light being recorded onto the film.
Kristopher’s fine art and commercial assignments have taken him around the world and allowed him to explore and capture vastly different environments. His work has been exhibited in London, New York City, Brussels, Berlin and Vancouver. The Lucie Foundation has awarded his recent time-lapse project, My City Moves Me 1st place in the International Photography Awards moving image category.
All of these elements have lent themselves to the growth of Kristopher Grunert’s signature and coveted photographic style. His work blurs the lines and offers a natural fluidity between fine art and commercial photography, and his images are respected internationally in both realms. Be it 800 feet below in the blackest pitch of a gold mine, to banking 800 feet above a prairie wind farm, or on the surface at menacing minus 45 degrees celsius, Kristopher is at home, his focus never wanes, and he gets the image that he knows is there.