Portraitfotografie Berlin

Dear friends of Susanna Kraus,
It is with great regret and deep sorrow that we have to inform you that Susanna Kraus passed away on 9 March 2025. The IMAGO Camera Studio will remain closed.
As the visionary mind behind the IMAGO Camera, in 21 years of IMAGO, Susanna has left a lasting impression on the lives of many people with her artistic flair, her craftsmanship, but above all with her warm and inexhaustible energy – with the IMAGO Camera and beyond.
In 2005, Susanna rediscovered the old walk-in large-format camera that her father, physicist Werner Kraus, and goldsmith Erhard Hößle had developed in the 1970s. Since the day it was reactivated, she has devoted all her energy as an artist to this unique craft of light painting. Over many years of creative and manual labour, she has breathed new life into the camera and managed it with tireless drive, inventiveness and a great deal of love. IMAGO Camera and Susanna Kraus have thus become an integral part of the art and photography scene.
Over the years, thousands of unique IMAGO portraits have been created under Susanna’s direction, each one unique and each carrying Susanna’s artistic signature. The IMAGOgrams and the camera have been exhibited at countless exhibitions in Germany and abroad in the past.
On Susanna’s behalf, her family and friends would like to express their gratitude for the wonderful moments she enjoyed working with IMAGO and the encounters she had with so many warm-hearted people. Susanna’s artistic legacy will be honored in an IMAGO exhibition, announcements will be published here and in our newsletter.
The process already initiated by Susanna is now being continued by her heirs: the IMAGO Camera is to be passed on to the next generation of photo-art-technology enthusiasts and a successor is to be found. This extraordinary legacy of photographic history is to be preserved and carried into the future.
The IMAGO Camera has been used in artistic photography as a self-portrait camera since 1972. A living, interactive Gesamtkunstwerk between science, art, craft and spectacular self-awareness. A globally unique machine that creates life-size, undistorted portraits without the diversions via the negative – free from digital processes, in unrivalled photographic quality and size. The special photographic setting created by the IMAGO Camera enables an unrivalled degree of authenticity.
The one-of-a-kind IMAGO Camera is now for sale for the first time since its development over 50 years ago. The sale is being organised by bidding and will be managed by Susanna’s sons.
Further information and enquiries: kraus@imagocamera.com