My Name is Julia Margarita Hoedl and I love to combine different art fields turning them into fine art underwater photography.
My art work is about taking distance from the noise of the world, about focusing on the inner voice and about staging thoughts and emotions.
I am mainly working conceptual. Often it takes lots of effort, month or years from the first idea to the final image.
I love being a multi creative artist and photographer. I love humans, nature, it’s shapes, materials and its constantly changing colour schemes, movements, tenderness, creating new ideas and working with my hands. I love to obsereve. Light fascinates me and how it influences everything arround us, even under water. I am amazed by clowds, by the colours of the sky, by the mystical mist when the world seems to dissapear and by the smell of the forrest when it just started to rain.
My education in art (arts and crafts school Vienna), design (masterdegree in design and product management) and acting (state certificate in acting) influences my work and no matter if it’s a painting, a poem, a song, a dance move, a theatre play, a smell, a special connection to a human being, an animal, or a plant, it all influences me as a person and how I see and experience the world. Underwater you can’t talk to your model to tell them to turn the head a tiny bit more towards the light, they are moving and I am moving threedimentional at the same time. You have much more outtakes underwater to get the perfect shot.
Always open-minded and eager to experiment, I continuously seek out new materials, techniques, and creative concepts to enhance my craft. In my underwater photography I can built and descide everything myself: the backgrounds, the accessories, the dresses, the make up, the light, camera tools and much more.
Often the weather takes big influence on my work. If it’s possoble or not and in which way.
You not only need the physical ability and strength to carry the amout of equipment ,you also need patience, money and knowledge to dive in currents and waves and you need lots of fresh water to wash and hang up everything you used after a shooting in salt water or pool water.
I love being in the water, not just because there are no interuptions by mobile phones. I usually prefer free diving instead of scuba diving for underwater photography. I feel more free and connected. You become weightless, feel infinite and carried.
Life goes far beyond the comprehensible. I believe this is also a reason why I like being in the water so much, because it is infinite. Because it carries an approach to grasping timelessness of space and time.
Photography is a medium through which I can express my creativity, ideas, and emotions.
Everyone who looks at my photographs is encouraged to feel their own interpretations, to imbue them with their life views and wisdom. Individual, rich, and diverse.
“Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the worlds.”
Jalaluddin Rumi
Exhibitions:
- BUDAPEST INTERNATIONAL FOTO AWARDS | Gallery House of Lucie, Budapest, Hungary 2026
- DISOBEDIENT IMAGES | Arles OFF, festival Les Rencontres de la photographie Arles, France, 2025
- LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS| Visable Voices, Art & Human Rights 2.0, WUK Museum, Vienna, Austria, 2025
- BEYOND THE SURFACE | Arles OFF, festival Les Rencontres de la photographie Arles, France, 2024
- UNDERGROUND | Angewandte Festival, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, 2024
- GOLDEN NIGHT | Artboxproject Basel Airport, during ArtBasel, Switzerland, 2024
Awards:
Gold Winner: “The Man and the Sea” | Tokyo International Foto Awards 2025, Category: Fine Art/ Akt
Bronze Winner: “The Man and the Sea” | Budapest International Foto Awards 2025
Nominated: “Vibrant” and “The Encounter” | Berlin Photogrphy Award 2025 >> Nature: Wildlife & Animals, People: Fashion
Nominated: Photo series “Silence – The voice of your Heart” | Fine Art Photography Award 2025
Nominated: “The Man and the Sea” | Monocrome Photography Award 2025
Nominated for the Neptune State Prize 2023 – Environmental and Innovation Award for Sustainable Development, Water Projects: Creative Sector
Publications:
BLICKWINKEL Photography Magazin : “Blur & Beyond” Issue 008, 2025
Photobook “Disobedient Images” of the group exhibition in Alres 2025 by Thomas Gerwers
“Back to Colour”, published in the German photography magazine Profifoto 7-8.25
Photobook “Beneath the SURFACE” of the group exhibition in Alres 2024 by Petra and Thomas Gerwers
“Subsurface” published in the German photography magazine Profifoto 7-8.24