Amba Luna was born in Innsbruck, Austria in 2001. Her work focuses mainly on creating photographs in combination and correlation to written words and objects. She enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in 2020. There she was taught by Professor Rolf Bier for the first year and then specialized in photography in the class of photography and film by Professor Ricarda Roggan. In 2025 she successfully completed her fine arts diploma.
At the heart of my work is the belief that we are made of other people's stories as much as our own. Every conversation, every borrowed sentence, every half-remembered moment leaves a trace. I work across photography, language and found or upcycled material, building photo-objects that sit somewhere between image and artifact, bound together by a line of text. Everything I make is assembled from what came before. I take it in, let it become something else, and hand it to whoever comes next. Katherine Hampsten put it like this: "It's like a game of catch with a lump of clay. Each person catches it and molds it with their perceptions before tossing it back." Almost always, my work is expressed in series. I am drawn to patterns. This stems from the deep craving to understand patterns in people, in life, and in the way things intertwine with one another. My background in psychology shapes how | look at closeness, at memory, at the quiet ways people are formed through contact with others. My work is a way of making what is felt tangible: giving shape and texture to what usually stays unseen. That being said, I want to release you from the idea of having to understand the following works in every respect, of catching the metaphorical clay throw at you without it being molded. Because I think it is like Miles Davis said: "If you understood everything I said, you'd be me."