Karolina Burlikowska photographs cherries in brandy glasses and flowers through rain – finding joy in nature and contrast

Working across still life, collage and mixed media, the London-based Polish photographer is drawn to details that feel “slightly off, slightly magical”.

It started with a friend’s Sony Ericsson phone in Poland in the early 2000s. Karolina Burlikowska got hold of it and started taking pictures. She begged her parents for a camera. She spent hours after school on DeviantArt and Tumblr, looking at what other people were making and trying things herself. “I got obsessed” is the phrase she uses, and it describes her entire journey that followed.

After a year studying at Akademia Fotografii in Warsaw, where she first encountered professional photographers and began to understand what a practice could look like, she moved to London. After years of assisting on kids’ shoots, high-fashion, food, and TV ads, she absorbed how different photographers and assistants worked until her own rhythm gradually revealed itself. She now works primarily in still life, moving between digital and analogue, shooting on a proper camera or just her phone, scanning, printing, and reworking images until they feel right. This year, she became commercially represented worldwide by Making Pictures.

The images she makes are vivid and slightly strange. A cherry suspended on a long stem inside a brandy glass, the liquid below it layered in bands of yellow and red. A grid of sweets, like gummy bears and small figurines in every colour, arranged like a scientific sample. A flower photographed through a wet surface, its petals blurring into something translucent and barely there. Across it all runs a consistent aesthetic that’s clinical and ordered, but also very much playful and alive. “I’m drawn to contrasting feelings,” she says. 

When it comes to the creative process, Karolina takes herself outdoors and into nature, observing the small details most people walk past. I’m drawn to small details, disrupted patterns, reflective surfaces, natural phenomena – anything that feels slightly off, slightly magical.” But she is clear that inspiration arrives during the making, not before. “I just follow what catches my eye,” she says, “and try to stay open to where it takes me.” On shoot days, she arrives with a plan and a lighting idea, then allows herself to deviate if the structure starts to feel too rigid. “Ultimately, I want to have fun and play a little when shooting my own ideas.”

The project she is most proud of right now is Terra Incognita, which means ‘unknown land’ in Latin. It’s a recently completed self-published zine designed by Eugenia Luchetta at Studio Salina, formed of collage and mixed media built from her own photography – featuring spikey compositions and bold, textural colour formations. The premise of the project grew from her instinct to observe nature without affecting it in any way, and it also reflects that 90 per cent of her work consists of physically manipulated prints. “I was observing the natural world but didn’t want to disrupt it in situ,” she explains, “so I created new, surreal worlds with their representation as a print.” 

One collage from the zine is a current favourite of hers, particularly for the way the colours melt into a gradient at the top, and for the cut-out shape that follows the contour of a leaf. “It just feels right,” she says. 

Sometimes it’s important to take a moment and reflect on why you make work in the first place, as well as your purpose for showing it to your audience. Karolina has many fun shoots with creatives planned for the future, and when asked what will happen when she puts it out into the world, her hope is simple: “At least one person will find joy looking at it.”