NATALIE CHRISTENSEN is an award-winning photographer whose work begins in ordinary settings and moves quietly toward the sublime. Through subtle acts of deconstruction, she reduces space to color fields, geometry, and shadow, allowing atmosphere and structure to carry meaning.
Christensen has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. She has served as a cultural tour delegate for the UAE Embassy and was recently invited as Artist-in-Residence at Château d’Orquevaux in France. Her monograph 007 – Natalie Christensen was published by Setanta Books, London. Her work is held in permanent collections and has been featured in numerous fine art publications.
More of her work may be appreciated on Natalie’s website.
Artist Statement
The Deconstructed Self
In 2014, I moved from Kentucky to New Mexico, leaving behind my lifelong home and a twenty-five-year career as a psychotherapist. The transition was exhilarating, but it also opened a period of sustained questioning and reflection.
Like many artists drawn to New Mexico, I was immediately struck by the distinctive Southwestern light. While the region’s natural beauty is widely celebrated, my attention turned instead to peripheral and often overlooked landscapes. I began photographing color fields and geometric forms, drawn to the way light and shadow could generate complex, quietly charged narratives. These isolated moments within the suburban environment revealed themselves as deeply metaphorical. Closed and open doors, empty parking lots, forgotten swimming pools. What compelled me was not only the spaces themselves, but my own response to them, the impulse to interpret, to project, to linger.
My training as a psychotherapist shaped this way of seeing. I learned that meaning often emerges through questions rather than answers, and these photographs extend that practice. The symbols and spaces within the images invite an encounter with what remains concealed from consciousness. The scenes offer no remarkable histories, yet they resonate with something intimately familiar. They touch experiences that are quietly present, sometimes unsettling, sometimes wry, always felt.
