Photography in Berlin

Pregnancy portraiture: coming full circle

Photography in Berlin, Portraits / September 25, 2023

There are endless facets of wonder to pregnancy and yet, physically and visually, it’s a constant challenge. Carrying your child inside you, cohabitating in the most intimate way, feeling its character while still invisible to everyone else… 

There is a whole market for pregnancy portraits, belly casts, and so on, but I have never been drawn to it myself.

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Honestly, I have never really photographed my own – or any other – pregnancy before. But, recently I encountered a moment in my life where it was conceptually impossible not to do so. To go back to the beginning: Claudia de la Torre is a dear friend and I have always loved working with her. We met when she was a student at the Karlsruhe Art Academy and connected instantly through our shared passion for artist books, and she founded her own publishing house, backbonebooks, in 2011. A Mexican artist based between Berlin and New Mexico, Claudia has made an impressive career as an artist, publisher, and creator of artist book workshops worldwide.

And through 2015 and 2016, I was lucky enough to have her by my side as my collaborator, model, friend, publisher – and babysitter!

plaster-cast-women-art-black-and-white-photography-female-photographer-female-friendship Together, we would make a body cast in the living room, then she would go read a book to my son and daughter. We would shoot slides on the balcony, then cook a meal together. Claudia has been part of my family ever since. To bring this story full circle, in 2016, we collaborated on the artist edition book of ‘Das Rheinrauschen’, which we launched during my solo show in Basel, including a sample of the river perfume I had created as a roll-on scent. Then in 2019, Claudia showed my work in Tokyo and published my artist book, Zitronen-Wal-Seife. And, now, in 2023, this amazing woman – whose belly I had cast in my living room years ago – is carrying her own child and becoming a mother.

art photography, black and white photography, female photography, still life, lemon, food photography  When Claudia told me she was expecting, I instinctively knew that to witness her pregnancy via portraiture was absolutely essential, and wonderful. What is special for me about these portraits, on an aesthetic level, is that the shape of the belly is being created by her own hands. It’s the hands that actively define the space of her pregnant belly, rather than the belly just showing itself.

pregnancy-portrait-pregnant-woman-friendship-celebration-black-and-white-photography-beautiful-woman And so, obviously, I want my pregnancy portraits to serve as beautiful memories of this very particular time for Claudia and her dearest ones.

But I also see these portraits as an invitation to others to shape their own image during important moments of their lives – moments that so often slip away from us in our everyday lives.

And I am happy to listen, support, and assist in this very process.

 

Empowering portraiture: a magical Berlin retreat

Photography in Berlin / June 30, 2023

empowering portraits, female photographer, Berlin portraits, Berlin retreat, creative exchange, empowered women Among many other wonderful accolades, Lisa Witter is a magical networker – a network creator and nurturer who brings brilliant people together for good. In her day job, Lisa is the co-founder of the Apolitical Foundation, a community devoted to making our governments work better for 21st century citizens. ‘Off duty’, she loves to host one-of-a-kind gatherings. So, when she asked me on board as an empowering portrait photographer for a retreat, at her beautiful country house near Berlin, it was an automatic yes!

We gathered, walked, cooked, shared, and listened – and, of course, we had a lot of fun together. Some of us already knew each other very well, some didn’t.

And we all shared, openly and candidly, exactly where we are at professionally, in order to best support one another and to share our individual expertise with the group.

empowering portraits, female photographer, Berlin portraits, Berlin retreat, creative exchange, empowered women Each and every one of the women gathered at Lisa’s retreat were very special and we developed immediate bonds. We discovered and unravelled so many crossovers between us and stories to tell. It felt like pure magic. And it felt like the beginning of new, shared stories and adventures – which is, so far, precisely what has been happening to me ever since! But more on that when it’s time…

Over the course of our two days together, I took empowering portraits of seven of the women on Lisa’s retreat. Using our beautiful, rural location as our studio just happened naturally.

I wanted to try and capture some of the changes in the air and to contribute to the participants’ upcoming personal developments, such as starting work in new positions.

And the whole process was one of fluid exchange. With one of the women, we had been sharing our insecurities about our singing voices with each other, then, once I put my camera down, we began a healing voice session. Together, we were able to free something, to break down a blockage. I really do believe that one thing always leads to another.

The empowering portraits I captured over these wonderful days at Lisa’s retreat show something really special. In them I see beautiful, vulnerable, super strong women who do amazing work for us – as a society and on this planet.

Each one excels in her own field of expertise and power. Our retreat is over but, already, I look forward to taking their portraits in the future in my Berlin studio.

 

Personal Branding Photography: Twins and Colleagues

Photography in Berlin, Portraits / January 20, 2023

When someone sits for me, it’s an encounter based on trust. They share their vulnerabilities and insecurities with me and trust me to look at them afresh – giving them space to truly show themselves in spite of it all. 

In my personal branding photography practice now, I have started to ask everyone who sits for me to give me three aspects or elements that they would like their portrait to convey.

These become my guidelines – then, from there, we dive into the exchange. 

art photography, empowering photography, portraits of women, personal branding photographyIn one of my favourite empowering photography commissions, I was working around the themes of collaboration and pairs. My task was to photograph two curators and writers who have a long history of collaborating over many years. It was super interesting to work with them, both individually and as a team. 

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One of the women actually used to be my gallerist, then she became a friend. The other woman is a twin – and it so happened that her sister was in town at the same time as her portrait photography booking with me and also needed a professional headshot for her new business in Ireland. This led to a very intense day of three individual and two duo sessions… we had a lot of fun!

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However, the most fun thing about this commission for me was seeing a completely different face to each person. They all needed a totally different approach and way of being handled. With Hannah (who I have known the longest) I had to be very tough, in order to get her to focus on the task at hand! And her portrait is a jewel for me. She shines.

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With Lena, she had a fixed photo pose that called for a very soft and slow approach from me, guiding her to alter her self-presentation and find alternative ways of showing herself. From there, the team sessions were easy! It was wonderful – and fun! – to share this new space and method of working with people who I had, at that point, only interacted with through my art practice or as a friend. 

In truth, this new crossover made me a little nervous as I had to play a completely different role than the ones I was used to.

art photography, empowering photography, portraits of women, personal branding photographyPlus, knowing that they expected not only a portrait but a work of art from me definitely sent the stakes higher! But, ultimately, I love how each one of the women shines in her own image.

And I love how a totally new presence and power appears once they appear alongside the other half of their partnership, whether work or family. What emerges from my lens makes me glad to facilitate personal branding photography – finding new and fun ways to help people communicate their inner selves to the outside world.

 

New paths, new practices: winter reflections

Photography in Berlin / January 20, 2023

So much of life is in the timing. Often it can be less about the what and more about the when (and the where and the why). This is what I’ve been reflecting on lately as an artist and practitioner. So when people ask me ‘How’s it going with your art?’, my truest answer seems to be ‘I don’t know!’ 

The big question I’m asking myself is: art or photography?
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Where should I focus? How should I position myself? What should the function of my work be? My heart has decided that I want to be more in the world of applied photography for now – this is clear. 

But in some ways this being in between is a struggle. My head isn’t always sure. ‘How can I do this now?’ and ‘Can I really carve out the time?’, I ask myself. I can struggle to sleep, and I don’t have enough space and self care as my foundation.

empowering photography, monochrome photography, art photography, Berlin photographer, nature photography And when this happens, I can feel a lack of balance – where I’m not centred – and it’s a physical sensation. So, there’s some imbalance, and I’m not sure what it is, but I am sure that I have to give myself some space to find it. What I do know is that I am being called.

I love to create usable, personal branding photography: of course, I love art photography, but not all the portraits I capture need to be artistic. This utility isn’t a judgement and it doesn’t mean that the subject isn’t magic. It just means that not everything has to be complicated!

As a photographer, my special gift is that I can do – and feel genuinely excited about – a wide range of things… from still lifes of fruit, to documenting weddings, and portraits of women.

I specialise in feeling and capturing. I love creating coherency of vision across an event or project or organisation: I am that one set of eyes capturing everything. And it’s fun! 

In fact, for me, my cooking practice centres on the same joy as making art, which is in turn the same joy as portraiture. At the end of the day, I believe it’s all about caring and nurturing and positioning.

empowering photography, monochrome photography, art photography, Berlin photographer, nature photography So, for now, I feel this internal shift unspooling: perhaps I am, at this moment, becoming more of a photographer than an artist. But how do I embrace this without feeling like I’ve given up on something? This is my ongoing question to myself.

However, what I do know is that nothing is ever closed. It’s all about timing.

 

Family portraiture: capturing the beauty

Photography in Berlin, Portraits, Storytelling and Art Making / January 20, 2022
Family portraiture is a fine art.

It’s about getting close, but still keeping that little bit of space. In fact, I believe it’s the perception of a related outsider that best captures family moments: very much present, yet at that crucial distance. 

grandmother portrait, family portraiture, monochrome portrait, artistic portrait, female photographer, female artist Within my own family, the photographic act rarely takes centre stage, it’s more like briefly coming up for air or jotting down a quick note, while being immersed in the flow of things. So, getting round to capturing family portraiture always needs a specific type of urgency in order to make it happen, like when we gathered to photograph my grandmother shortly before she passed away.

During this particular session, in front of my great grandmother’s family home, she urged me to photograph her sons for her. To create the desired set-up with my uncles, I needed my grandmother’s personal commission.

And, I have to say, it was a truly empowering experience for me to be directing them as a professional photographer after having always been their little niece.musician portrait, family portraiture, monochrome portrait, artistic portrait, female photographer, female artist  

It was a brand new dynamic and the resulting images give just a trace of a specific moment in time that will never occur again.

Because I have a deep respect for family constellations and the art called for in capturing their representation, I was very happy and honoured to be commissioned for family portraiture after a friend’s daughter’s confirmation last autumn. Coming into this group of family members and close friends, it felt very precious to be trusted with such an important job. The process was absolutely magical – and a lot of fun for everyone involved.

I could feel that I became a witness and a vessel for what they wanted to express and share with one another.

portraits of women, family portraiture, baby portrait, artistic portrait, female photographer, female artist For my 2012 solo show at the M-Museum in Leuven, Belgium, I took parallel exhibitions as starting points for my installation Poem to be sung. One was the Sol Lewitt retrospective from which I derived the shape alphabet, and the other was a Madonna sculpture from the museum’s Medieval collection. Ultimately, my Artist with removed objects and child  photograph is a dialogue of both these influences, taking a unique place in my growing collection of portraits of women. Plus, I had a 3 year-old boy of my own at home while preparing for this show – my first big solo show in a museum.

So this photograph most definitely captured my creative process in a moving and personal way too.

woman portrait, family portraiture, monochrome portrait, artistic portrait, female photographer, female artist Ultimately, what I’ve found through my empowering photography work, is that people want to be shown with their closest family members. For example, I was working on a portrait of my godmother, a Finnish priest living in Vienna. After our session, she called for her sons, and then her husband, to come in too. It felt to me as if her self image was only complete when surrounded by her loved ones. We are social animals after all. 

And, as for me – the photographer in the room – what’s special and satisfying is the inherent trust that I sense being extended towards me. Being in such a situation gives me the confidence to involve myself, respectfully, and arrange beautiful family portraits according to what feels right.

The Magic of Portrait Photography (Part Two)

Photography in Berlin, Portraits, Storytelling and Art Making / November 3, 2021

My portraits of women are a cornerstone of what I do. In that work, I am often hired to do a single portrait, which then expands into a pair or group portrait – this is down to the natural, evolving need to subsequently show that same person in connection with their products or within their team.

While in a single portrait session there is an intimate space between the person I am photographing and my camera, especially in terms of what she wants to represent professionally, as soon as there are two or more subjects, their shared relationship comes into play.

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Channeling my empowering photography ethos, my aim was to show Caroline Schneider, founder of Sternberg Press, as the true art and discourse-related thinker, as well as leader that she is.

When I took this solo portrait for Sternberg – a publishing house for artistic and cultural criticism, creative non-fiction, and literary and experimental fiction founded by Caroline in New York in 1999 – it gave way to a team shoot where I captured an even fuller picture of their work environment and the dynamics exist between them. It is in their creative home on Karl-Marx-Allee, amidst their books, that I took this series.

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I wanted to illustrate how Caroline has a very strong relationship to each and every single title published by the press, plus with the vital, dynamic team she has carefully built over the years in this truly unique place. Her beauty shines.

Indeed, once you start representing a person in a professional context, there is always that wider spectrum or bigger picture which wants to be shown to the world. And, ideally, all of these photographs should be taken by the same person, so that they can create a cohesive vision – one which aesthetically becomes one body. That’s where I come in!

art curator, women portrait, women monochromeIn this vein, I’ve also photographed Eva Meyer-Hermann: a curator and art historian who decided to become a curator for artists, as her way of responding to the political developments in the art world which have led to its general lack of real exchange and mediation.

And it was precisely at this special moment of building her new identity – and website – that I came into the picture, with my personal branding photography, with the aim of communicating both Eva herself and her practice to a wider audience.

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We spent a couple of hours together in her office – first alone, then with her associate curator, Johannes Schmidt. Every photograph I took for Eva had a different role to play. In the headshot, the aim was to show her as open and smiling, offering an invitation for dialogue.

The other two images show moments of contemplation and creative thinking, as well as her explaining a work of art that is dear to her.

Similarly, I have enjoyed the privilege of capturing Laura Galatti’s portrait. Laura is a Swiss pianist, composer, and politician. After having encountered her and her partner, Christina Thürmer-Rohr, performing Die Kontroverse in the Viennese Liszt-Saal, I had the honour of joining them during rehearsal in their performance space, Akazie 3, here in Berlin Schöneberg.

empowering photography, portraits of women, female pianist, female artistsMy role in facilitating empowering photography here was centred on conveying Laura’s artistry and skill. This type of work presents me with the wonderful challenge of somehow finding a meaningful way to convert aural beauty into a visual medium.

So in my single portraits of Laura, the viewer is able to experience Laura listening to the sound she is producing with a metal sheet. And in her partnered shots, I have sought to communicate her close relationships and dialogues with her instrument, her partner, and the very process of writing music.personal branding photography, portraits of women, empowering photography

Ultimately, it’s all an organic process. During the portrait session, the women I’m photographing talk with me and show me what they are selling or creating or offering. Then, I capture these aspects too.

In fact, in so much of my art photography work to date, I have searched for ways to capture invisible processes within a photographic image, something of an essence that would otherwise be hidden: from plants and fruits, to animals, and nonverbal communication between people.

In this way, I am very versatile in what and how I can photograph, so website photography – as this broad, rich spectrum – just comes naturally to me. 

 

 

The Magic of Portrait Photography (Part One)

Photography in Berlin / October 20, 2021

food waste reduction, quinces 2021I adore quinces. I love their velvet skins, the hard bodies, their rich perfume, their androgyne character, their rich yellow colour that turns red in the cooking process. I love how they challenge me as a cook and I love their role in ancient cooking practices – both here, in Europe, and in the SWANA* region – and find it interesting to think about what traditions they have been part of throughout history. In fact, I am currently experimenting with some Jewish SWANA recipes, both savoury and sweet: I have a wonderfully large quince harvest waiting for me on my balcony at home and, true to type, will be documenting my processes in working with them this season.

Outwith my own kitchen, I am devoting time and energy to a brand new space that, like my own kitchen, will be home to exciting experiments and adventures in all things food – including food waste reduction – and the senses.

creativity workshops, art workshops, Lobe Berlin 2021Lobe is a house project in Wedding: a newly built, brutalist concrete building defined by its terraces, its garden – where, among other things, quinces grow – and its many cohabiting animals. Soon, its ground floor units will become one space, a fresh, joint space for events, workshops, food experiments, and a lab for creating a more sustainable future.

Ana Zatezalo and Olivia Reynolds are the founders of this new space and project. With quinces fresh in from the harvest of the Lobe garden and the quince being chosen as the symbol of their new venture (name to be revealed!), I knew that I just had to channel my empowering photography approach to capture them with these brilliant fruits as a symbolic starting point of their collaboration journey.

So, what happens when you bring artistic, innovative women and versatile, delicious fruits together?

personal branding photography, portraits of women, empowering photographyNot least a dream commission for me as a portrait photographer in the world of personal branding photography… weaving together my roles as a member of the founding team, cook, and photographer – one who specialises in portraits of women and fruits! – and capturing the very essence of Lobe’s future here in Berlin.

Over the next couple of months, I will be the one to create all of Ana and Olivia’s website photography: ultimately creating online portraits that communicate the playful potential in business collaboration. This is part of my work that I really love – distilling and celebrating the character and mission of fascinating people who are creating important work. So, watch this space…

*SWANA is an acronym referring to the wide geographical area which encompasses South West Asia and North Africa.