ARTIST: Bettina Von Zwehl

Goodness me, I really love Bettina Von Zwehl's work. She came to talk at my university last term. Since then, she has influenced my work quite a bit (I haven't shown any of that specific work on here yet, though). The aim of her work is to photograph her subjects when they are in no way thinking about their personal appearance. Well, this is deffinately the case in 'Untitled One', 'Untitled Three' and 'Alina'. In 'Untitled One' she photographed her subjects within 30 seconds of them waking up. They were told to wear certain clothes, and they slept in Zwehl's bed for the night, so she could quickly bring them in front of the screen where they were to be photographed. In 'Untitled Three' the subjects had to exert themselves physically for a certain amount of time, and then laid face up on the floor to be photographed. In 'Alina', Zwehl had her subjects sit with their arms folded, in a dark room, listening to a specially chosen peice of music which lasted about ten mintues. She then photographed them using flash, which was quick enough so their reaction to it wasn't seen in the final image. The interesting thing about 'Alina' (or perhaps not so interesting) is that half of the women are music students, and half aren't. Initially, she wanted to see if she there would be any contrast between the portraits of people who have been musically trained and those who haven't. There isn't really any contrast, so perhaps these are slightly unsuccessful. However it is clear in the images how the sitters are deeply immersed in the music. As for 'Untitled Two', I can't quite remember what the situation is there, but they are interesting. I think the subjects just sat in the dark for a while or something... can't remember.

Her 'Anatomy Of Control' work I also find ingriguing. Von Zwehl usually finds her subjects by walking around the streets and picking people who look like they would benifit the work. So, in this case she asked the permission of parents so she could photograph their children. The childern were left alone with the camera (behind a curtain), and a table if they wanted to sit. They were given a cable release so they could take their portrait themselves. Von Zwehl then paired images together according to how the child was posing. The results are very interesting. Some are so playful and ambiguous. I don't know how getting children to take their own portraits managed to work out so well (not because they are children, but it's that the idea is so delightfully simple, and the results are... not).

Bettina Von Zwehl's work is highly inspiring to me. A lot of her images hold a certain quietness, and others can be almost daunting. Most of her works have deffinately been successful in visually describing the event occuring, and at the same time, still leave a lot of room for questions. Very nice.


On a completely un-related matter, I present to you my latest graphic. It is sexy. Tssss. Like most of my best ideas, this image just came to me while I was going about my daily business. When that happens, I must expel the image and then thrust it upon the world. I think this is highly descriptive of her character. You can do nothing but agree. AGREE!