My name is Viola Teske. I was born in August 1978 and grew up in Rostock, a coastal town located in the northeast of Germany. After finishing school, I studied chemistry at the University of Rostock and worked in the department of physical chemistry at the institution of chemistry while doing the research for my dissertation. In early 2007, I moved to Düsseldorf where I spent almost 9 years working as an analyst for a consulting company with a focus on the petrochemical industry. In early 2011, I created my personal blog Ola’s Welt which was originally meant to be a kind of virtual playground to toy with ideas, share thoughts and tell stories but ultimately made me fall in love with photography. A few years later, at the end of 2015, I decided to leave my job in the office, return to my hometown and focus on my art, if only for a while. I returned to the petrochemical world in the summer of 2018 but still try to make new art when I can. As a photographer or – as I’d rather describe myself – photo artist, I am entirely self-taught and still enjoy to explore new and old techniques. I have a preference for strong colours, minimalistic art work, a shallow depth of field and all the little things that others might not even notice. While most of my work is digital, I also like to experiment with analog photography, different film formats and alternative photographic processes such as cyanotype. Thus there is also a little bit of chemistry included in my art, at least once in a while.