Hannah Coen Blends Photography, CGI, and Sculpture in 'Stone Relief'

In an interview with C41 Magazine, artist Hannah Coen discusses her project 'Stone Relief,' which cycles a photograph through CGI and sculpture before returning to photography. Coen explores the intersection of traditional photographic methods and digital experimentation, using CGI not for polished aesthetics but as an investigative tool to introduce tactility and imperfection. She emphasizes process over polish, finding correlations between early photographic techniques and digital workflows. The project transforms a 2D image into a 3D concrete relief, shifting focus from the photographic image to the photographic object, allowing new perspectives. Coen also discusses a collaboration with the Warburg Institute, which holds 400,000 analogue images of sculptures, paintings, and drawings. Together, they identified lost or destroyed sculptures whose only records are analogue photographs or drawings; Coen reconstructed these in 3D using CGI tools, creating new photographic and moving-image work. She sees applications for such processes in fashion campaigns, where single images can be reused across formats. Coen believes contemporary audiences seek personal narratives within digital culture, not nostalgia.