Born in Wels / Upper Austria in 1941, she discovered her passion for photography in Paris, where, after completing her training as a stylist, she worked as a photo model until the end of the 1960s. In 1969, she returned to Vienna and began her career as a photographer. From the mid-1970s onward, she made a name for herself through striking advertising campaigns for Römerquelle [mineral water] and poster series for Palmers [lingerie]. Around the same time, she met the painter Kurt Kocherscheidt, to whom she was married from 1973 until his premature death in 1992. Since 1985, her fashion photographs and portraits have appeared in international magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and Marie Claire. In 1994, her flourishing career took her to New York, where she continued her collaboration with the Austrian fashion designer Helmut Lang, begun in 1986, and presented several solo exhibitions. Through Michel Würthle, Semotan met the artist Martin Kippenberger, whom she married in 1996 and divorced in 1997. Since the mid-1990s, she has divided her time between Vienna, New York, and Jennersdorf in Burgenland, and has worked not only as an award-winning photographer but also as a visiting professor at institutions such as the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In recent years, her landscape, fashion, and nude photographs, as well as her portraits and still lifes, have increasingly been presented in international exhibitions and artists’ books.
Say Who / Michaël Huard