Journey Through the Lens of Suzanne Koller: From Vienna to Paris and Beyond

• Koller, who was born and raised in Vienna, feels “very Austrian.” She moved to Germany, and then to Switzerland, where she studied graphic design. She’s lived in France for over 30 years. 
• Knowing from her teen years that she wanted to be an art director, Koller saw the glamour of working for a magazine. She became an intern at Elle magazine in Paris before interning in graphic design at Glamour—where she was first introduced to the idea of working in fashion.
• As a consultant, stylist, and art director, Koller found it exciting to make her own way with Self Service and to change hats, working with smaller magazines to avoid creative constraints.
• Koller focuses less on fashion and more on individual subjects, orienting herself toward documenting women through time in collaborative projects. 
• Driven by long-standing obsessions, her current interest is finding emerging talent and working with a new generation of creatives.
• Keeping herself out of her comfort zone helps maintain her energy and curiosity even as she considers herself a workaholic. 
• Koller is not driven by nostalgia but more inspired by the now, whether in the supermarket perusing ingredients, going to a museum, people-watching, or taking a flight. She believes in the significance of “emptying [her] brain” periodically.
• In an age of over-engagement with social media, what’s contemporary to her now is staying true to oneself.

‍Notable Quotes: 

• “I learned little by little in my own magazine. Back then, as you said, I didn’t have to choose anyway because I could do whatever I wanted. It was art direction, graphic design, packaging, whatever. I could do everything, and it was exciting to do all that together at that point.” —Suzanne Koller
• “I get easily bored also, so I like to switch actually. And I think it’s also more interesting to see everything like in a global—even if I’m just hired as a stylist, I like the idea that you see everything as a global thing, and you know from where it starts and where it goes, even if you’re not all the time part of, but you understand, the understanding of it is really interesting.” —Suzanne Koller
• “When you have someone who gives you directions, and you have to resolve that problem, and somehow once you have too much money, it’s always never the best idea. It’s actually better when you don’t have so much money for a project, then you have to really search for ideas and come up with something, and you get almost better in what you’re doing.” —Suzanne Koller
• “I have much more complicity, and I’m more hands-on by image-making…when you create an image, it becomes timeless because you don’t concentrate on the fashion anymore. I want to see the woman in the image, and so I have that feeling that maybe that’s what makes an image timeless.”  —Suzanne Koller
• “Today, the career of a photographer can grow quite quickly, but it can also disappear quite quickly. The amount of work a photographer has to accomplish today is 10 times more than it was 10, 20 years ago.” —Suzanne Koller
• On working with younger generations: “It’s also interesting because to push yourself to do something interesting and that’s part of our job, right? We always come up with something new and different [that] nobody has seen before. You have this complicity in this more comfort; you’re more in your comfort zone. But I think it’s also interesting that sometimes you are out of your comfort zone because sometimes I do believe by accident or by surprises you can do also something very interesting you haven’t expected before.” —Suzanne Koller
• “Once you’re too much in your comfort zone, you get bored. And I think your work becomes boring.” —Suzanne Koller
• “Stay true to yourself. I do believe that—to treasure the past, to live in the present, which is very difficult to achieve, and to trust your instincts for the future. That’s my kind of mantra for the moment because everything is so complicated and changes so fast, and in some ways, we’re also going backwards.” —Suzanne Koller