Kimberly Hahn’s irrational fear she was going blind, brought on by her rapidly deteriorating eyesight, caused a 3-year period in which she saw the world softly. This defect drew her to photography.  She would shoot photos of an unfocused world, but once printed she could hold the photos close and see every detail.  This became a way to rebuild memories of places/experiences she could not fully discern. Light, color and their resultant shapes became elements that helped her to navigate an unfocused, uncomfortable world. 

Drawing from these experiences, Hahn flips the process around by creating photographic abstractions that function as new information to be assimilated into our visual language and become references for future visual experiences.  The brain fools us into thinking we see complete environments, when in fact visual input is fractured. Hahn's images deconstruct these environments to represent the fleeting moments of light and color, the components our brains compile.  

To create abstract in camera images, Hahn collects, constructs, and uses tools like prisms, diverse light sources and handmade transparent, opaque objects. Hahn’s photographs mask photographic processes/techniques often causing them to be read as paintings or drawings. She encourages this blurring of mediums to up-end our notions of what we think photographs are.

Index Card Still Life are compositions that only exist as analogue photographs, but involve processes of drawing, collage, and photography.  These photographs were derived through a process of drawing to create a positive and negative index card.  The index cards were then placed on a copy stand and captured as if they were still lives.  The index cards were cut and rearranged throughout the shooting process. Hahn added color by dialing settings on a color enlarger and printing through black and white negatives.  After the prints were made, the images were cropped by hand to provide unique compositions, which took into account ways to animate the photos, subvert the grid, and how each image might dialogue with the others.

While the bulk of her work is photography, Hahn explores other mediums choosing those which best suit an intended message.  An example of this multi-disciplinary work can be seen in 60 Foot Golden Rule, which is a sculpture made in response to a political fight in the city of Santa Barbara.