Barbara Luisi is a photographer and a musician. After many years in New York City, she now lives and works in Vienna, Austria, and Venice, Italy. Her artist statement: "my work is concerned exclusively with the perception of three elements: darkness, sound and loneliness. As a trained classical violinist, I have to first hear my images and it is always this noise or music that triggers my themes."
Barbara Luisi was born and raised in Munich, Germany. At the age of nine, she began studying the violin. After graduating from the Munich Arts and Music High School she studied violin at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich and obtained the Concert Diploma. She was a violinist in the Munich Philharmonic, the Orchestra of Toulouse and the Bavarian State Opera as well as being the "primaria" (first violinist) in the "Pocci String Quartet.”
At age seventeen, she began exploring photography, experimenting with a Leica M6 and developing her work in her own darkroom. During the past decade she has devoted her time to her photography and numerous projects and books.
Throughout the body of her work she explores her fascination with myriad manifestations of light, especially nocturnal light in the streets of New York, Florence, Oslo, Tokyo, Vienna and Paris or deep in ancient caves or reflected in seascapes.
Barbara Luisi is married to conductor Fabio Luisi, together they have three children.[1]
On 21 January 2020 she made her debut in Carnegie Hall as a violinist in a program with harpist Alexander Boldechev.
