Miriam Steinberg’s photographic practice operates at the intersection of painting, photography, and light art. Her works resist the conventions of classical landscape photography, instead exploring the conditions under which landscape becomes visible: light, time, and atmosphere. In this sense, she situates herself within a tradition that extends from the Romantic conception of nature in Caspar David Friedrich, through the color-field painting of Mark Rothko, to the light art of James Turrell. Her photographs often emerge through analog multiple exposures, in which temporal layers overlap on a single strip of film. This technique produces images that function like visual time capsules—documents not only of place, but also of passing hours and shifting light conditions.
miriam steinberg
fotones
In this conjunction of time and image, Steinberg’s approach becomes almost scientific, while simultaneously unfolding a poetic dimension. The subsequent processing—the embedding of the prints in resin blocks or concrete, the play with reflection and transmitted light—extends the photographic surface into space. The work becomes an object that does not merely depict light, but itself emits and transforms it. Through these interventions, an additional level of perception emerges, placing the image in a meditative, almost auratic state. Steinberg’s works unite documentary rigor with a radically subjective, contemplative visual language. They make visible that landscape is not only experienced topographically, but above all atmospherically and emotionally—as a resonant space of light. Photons.
Artist
Miriam Steinberg
- Newcoomer
- High collector potential.
Exhibition
September 2025 Munich, “LICHT UND LUFT – an aesthetic bang.”
Publikationen
“fotones”, 2025.
163 ONE SIX THREE | art in print Piblish House
Working in the studio in the Netherlands.
Between abstraction and documentation..
Although Steinberg’s images are based on real landscapes, they often appear abstract. Horizon lines dissolve, fields of color overlap, forms blur. This abstraction bears an affinity to the color-field painting of Mark Rothko, in whose luminosity and meditative effect a spiritual dimension likewise resonates. At the same time, the documentary core remains intact: the images are grounded in specific places, in real lighting conditions, in a day that truly passes. Within this field of tension, a hybrid form emerges—neither purely documentary nor purely abstract, but a poetic realism that foregrounds perception itself.
Landscape as a space of resonance.
ince Romanticism, landscape has been a favored subject in art, reflecting projections of interiority and transcendence. Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings presented the natural realm as a metaphysical counterpart in which the subject could locate itself. Steinberg connects to this tradition in a certain way, but shifts the focus: it is not about depicting the landscape as such, but about the conditions of perception that make landscape possible as an aesthetic experience in the first place. Her photographs do not document mountains, horizons, or river courses in precise sharpness; rather, they translate the atmospheres that these places undergo through changing light. Landscape becomes a space of resonance, in which the fleetingness of the moment is inscribed.”
The artist during the working process.
ANALOG N°11 (2023), Größe: 42 x 42 cm, Giclée print – resin, wooden frame
It is not the landscape alone that interests me, but the conditions of its appearance—<br>my works are at once particles of light, time capsules, and resonant spaces.
Detail of ANALOG No. 11 (2023), size: 42 × 42 cm, giclée print – resin, wooden frame.
“I do not document the landscape itself, but the light that permeates it.”
exhibitions and bio
2025
Groupexhibition de Kunstkamer (Leiden, NL) – Apr/Aug
2024
NockNock Art fair (Amsterdam, NL) – Nov Glasgow Gallery of Photography, Analogue groupexhibition (online) – Aug Solo exhibition THUD-studio (Amsterdam, NL) – Apr Bargaleta contemporary art foundation (online) – Feb
2023
Groupexhibition MicksArts Gallery (Emmen, NL) – Oct/Dec Groupexhibition (Privas, FR) – May LensCulture Editors’ pick art photography awards The Unknown Runner Documentary & app (independant film production) Release: 25 September 2013 Distribution: espressomedia.co.uk Film & trailer: espressomedia.co.uk/unknown-runner/ Producer | Concept development | App design
Light is the true artist. Miriam Steinberg (born 1975, Netherlands) is a Dutch artist working at the intersection of photography, painting, and light art. After studying at the Design Academy and the Rietveld Academy, she initially began her career as a graphic designer before fully dedicating her artistic practice to photography from 2020 onward. Her works emerge in the tension between analog and digital techniques: multiple exposures, temporal overlays, and atmospheric layers condense into images that depict less the landscape in a classical sense than the conditions of its perception—light, time, and resonance.
By embedding her photographs in materials such as concrete or resin, Steinberg transforms the two-dimensional image into an object that itself reflects light and radiates into the surrounding space. For her, photography thus becomes not merely a representation, but a material event. Her works possess documentary rigor while simultaneously conveying a meditative quality—spaces of stillness that invite contemplation and make the emotional presence of light palpable.
In recent years, she has presented her work in a variety of contexts: in 2024, among others, at the NockNock Art Fair in Amsterdam, as well as in a major solo exhibition at THUD-Studio. As early as 2023, she participated in group exhibitions in Emmen (NL) and Privas (FR). She also gained international attention through the ongoing presentation of the documentary film The Unknown Runner, which she co-produced and which has been screened worldwide since 2012 and remains available on platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video.
Miriam Steinberg lives and works in Miriam Steinberg lives and works in the Netherlands and France.
