The interest in place and identity has run as a strand through Löwenstein’s photographic practice of over 20 years. In the 80's and 90's she has focused on commissions in documentary, editorial, architecture and industrial photography and worked for numerous national and international clients, for example Stern, OTIS, Dorling Kindersley and BMW. Since then she had several books with her work published and had numerous solo and group shows in Berlin, London, Glasgow and New York between 1993 and 2011.
She has been awarded a fellowship at University Campus Suffolk in 2008 to implement the use of 3D and other CGI technologies and concepts into the photography curriculum. Heike has an MA in Hypermedia Studies with merit from the University of Westminster in 1996. She studied photography at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich 1986-1988 and practised in Berlin from 1989-1996 before moving to London. She has worked and taught photography in London, Glasgow, Blackpool and Suffolk and now divides her time between Derby, Suffolk and London. She is Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Derby.
Heike is in the second year (part time) for a PhD in Fine Art - Photography at the Glasgow School of Art. Her focus for the PhD is the role of panoramic photography in communicating the relevance of place in the formation of identity; her field of enquiry is photography concerned with meaning of place and representation of identity. Her practice-based research pursues the impact of an environment upon the formation of identity and the self. She focuses on panoramic photography as a tool that can aid communication of this context. The role of space and place are central to her research. The work of human geographers Ti-Fu Yuan and Doreen Massey, landscape architect Ann Whiston-Spirn, philosophical theories on space and time, sociological theories on identity and memory, the history and context of the panorama and photography theory are analysed critically and inform the visual work. Composition, perspective, narrative, semiotics and form and scale of presentation have formal and conceptual significance in the making of the visual. Multimedia tools connecting individuals, communities and areas represented through the facilitation of the networking of images are being considered alongside other presentation methods, also allowing for the use of text and audio. The outputs of the PhD will be a 30-40.000 words thesis and artifacts to be exhibited or shown in book and/or electronic format. Most recently Heike has shown her work at the 2011 GSA PhD Show and in New York.Test_240411_Image 2_Me is one trial in developing and testing a method to ascertain the connection for a subject between a place and their identity and to create narratives and use signs in the staged image that relate to that connection. She has used herself as testing ground, not least to acknowledge that the understanding of her own identity informs the process.
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