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Sketching The Yashica

Pia Dehne Hates Her Roommate


Title: Colin, Kimbra
Artist: Pia Dehne
Gallery: I’m So Happy I Could Die, a book of her drawings, is out now from Art Berlin
Medium: Pencil on paper
Price: $1,500


During the snapshot-photography gold rush, everybody suddenly thought they could take a good picture if they just had a Yashica and some fucked-up buddies.

Then someone comes along who uses actual good snapshots (taken by both herself and her friends) to make faithfully rendered and startlingly alive pencil drawings. That’s what Pia Dehne does. She makes her subjects look more human, emotional, and approachable with graphite and paper than most people could do with a camera and full studio lighting.

German by birth, Pia is now a New Yorker through-and-through, especially as the people she documents in her art comprise a veritable laundry list of art-world luminaries and hipster hanger-outers. “My friends are the main inspiration for my work, for sure,” she says. “I love New York for my friends, and I hate it for my roommate.”

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