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Photographer and mixed-media artist Cristina Mittermeier is known for her powerful images that document our relationship with the planet’s most vulnerable ecosystems. She’s spent three decades behind the lens, capturing wildlife, communities, and landscapes around the world, often using her art to inspire climate action and environment protection. Her current exhibition at Hilton Contemporary in Chicago, titled Marks of Memory, features a collection of mixed-media works that reflect on memory, place, and the fragile beauty of the natural world.
Mittermeier has reworked her own portraits to explore how our lives can be shaped by bureaucracy and official systems. Each piece incorporates tiny, torn fragments of documents, including passports and birth certificates, reflecting on how photographs and documents hold memories, emotions and traces of the people and places that may be at risk of being lost.
“Each piece begins with a black-and-white portrait, made over decades of traveling to remote villages and ecosystems on the brink of collapse,” Mittermeier explains. “Layer by layer, I bury the photograph under old letters, immigration papers, torn pages, my children’s grades, memories pressed over memories.”
Inspired by the Mexican tradition of using flowers to honor the spirits of loved ones, Mittermeier also overlays paper flowers in her collages. These elements aren’t only decorative—they’re symbols of care, recognition, and resistance, inviting viewers to see the real lives behind the portraits. Mittermeier explains, “In its simplest terms, Marks of Memory explores how lives are shaped by paper and by the documents that grant belonging, withhold it, or never arrive at all, and by the persistent ways people endure anyway.”
Marks of Memory is on view until September 15 at Hilton Contemporary. You can keep up to date with the artist’s incredible work by following Cristina Mittermeier on Instagram.
Photographer Cristina Mittermeier’s exhibition, Marks of Memory, features a collection of mixed-media works that reflect on memory, place, and the fragile beauty of the natural world.
View this post on Instagram
Mittermeier has reworked her own portraits to explore how our lives can be shaped by bureaucracy and official systems.
View this post on Instagram
Each piece incorporates tiny, torn fragments of documents, including passports and birth certificates.
View this post on Instagram
Mittermeier also overlays paper flowers as symbols of care, recognition, and resistance.
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
Exhibition Information:
Cristina Mittermeier
Marks of Memory
July 22–September 15, 2026
Hilton Contemporary
Hilton Contemporary, 716 N Wells St, Chicago, IL 60654, United States
Cristina Mittermeier: Website | Instagram | Facebook
Hilton Contemporary: Website | Instagram
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Cristina Mittermeier on the Environmental Trials and Tribulations of Antarctica [Interview]
Explore 20 Years of Conservation Photography in Cristina Mittermeier’s New Book
Mixed-Media or Single-Medium Art: How To Find the Style That Works for You
