A Viennese Berliner, Ines Lechleitner (b. 1978) holds space for diverse media, disciplines and senses in her ever-evolving professional artistic practices – spanning photography, drawing, sound, film, cooking, and scent. Much of Ines’ professional work centres on portraiture, the process of capturing a person’s image or essence in a way that they find to be true, empowering, and unique. 

As an active freelance photographer, Ines seeks to facilitate and uphold the empowerment of women. For her, the moment of portraiture is vulnerable and precious, so, both as a woman and as an artist, she strives to create an experience – from consultation to handing over the final images – where her clients feel elevated and respected, their authenticity and unique strength translated via her lens. 

Ines’ most recent artistic explorations have led her to compose and custom-make Companion Scents. Born into a family of doctors, Ines has experimented, via fermentation, with the medicinal powers of food and how playing with these aspects can enhance the quality of our lives. Now, through her Companion Scent projects, Ines builds new multi-sensory portraiture practices utilising the healing powers and olfactory appeal of natural essences. Ines takes her laboratory (i.e. magic tool box) with her wherever she goes, and works to create scents which are truly site-, moment-, and person-specific – a scent to call in a specific landscape, an uplifting scent to support a quitting smoker, a dreaming scent to soothe a sick child, a collaborative scent to memorialise a friend on her palliative journey. 

Ines’ artistic work has been shown and shared internationally, including at: Museum CA2M (Madrid), M Museum (Leuven), Weltkulturenmuseum (Frankfurt), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Fondation Cartier (Paris), Kunstraum Niederösterreich (Vienna), NGbK (Berlin), and MUHKA (Antwerp).

"Ines is a unique and valuable asset to society – an artist who intuitively captures emotions and translates them into art, enabling us to experience these feelings firsthand."
- Lisa Witter, co-founder Apolitical Foundation