Raquel Glottman

Feminine, mysterious and timeless, are words that describe Raquel Glottman’s work. Her medium is photography, her element water. Born in the US but raised in Colombia. Leaving high school she moved to New York to study Liberal Arts at Sarah Lawrence College, a school renowned for its progressive, open-minded atmosphere.

Two years into her studies, her father, back in Colombia, suffered a terrible crisis that forced the family to move to Israel and start a new life. This event was abrupt and an existential confrontation, as all security and links to the past were lost. What remained constant for Glottman was the love and need for self expression through photography.

For the three years she lived in Israel she enrolled at the Musrara Art Academy in Jerusalem, this marked a new chapter in her artistic development. It is at this time that she began to work with self portraiture and experimenting with dark room techniques and alternative printing methods.

“To obtain my images I submerge myself for hours with my subjects. I create underwater settings with a visual intention and emotional tone, once all the elements are present, what follows is the consecration of the artistic moment.”

Moving back to New York City, Glottman enrolled in the School of Visual Arts, earning her BFA degree in photography as honorary student of her class. At this time she also discovered yoga, a path that would prove as profound and lasting as art - becoming a yoga instructor who has been teaching continuously for the past 17 years.

Contacted by the University of Miami Glottman is invited to be Artist in Residency at the university for one year. She accepted, which offered her a full scholarship to pursue her Masters degree in photography - exploring not only digital photography, but also to underwater photography.

“When I am inside water I feel an innate privacy, an intimacy, that allows for the sublime to reveal itself. My job is to observe, allow, and capture the fluid grace of the surreal liquid world”

Raquel’s subsequent big relocation was to London, moving to live with her future husband and father of her child, a Buddhist Jungian Psychologist. Raquel spent 4 years in London, during which she was deeply influenced by the Jungian psychoanalytical perspective, with a gravitating interest in Alchemy and its symbolisms.

She relates to her work through out as self-portraits. Her interest is in creating images that speak to and from the soul. Her work revolves around water, an element she regards as reflective of an inner landscape, a plane of existence not entirely physical in nature. For Raquel Glottman photography is the continuous accompanying element of her life, Her approach to the medium is instinctual, visceral and with a strong psychological base.