Alexander Bergström

Official Site

Sarah Hermans

1. what’s your philosophy?

I believe that what goes around, comes around. (Not that I never do or say the wrong things, but I think that when you try this, you’re already accomplishing a huge part of what Karma is about) I also don’t want to look back on life thinking anything that starts with ‘would have - could have or should have.’ And that’s a hard thing to accomplish, but I try. On another note, do you know the book ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’ from Foer? It almost felt like reading my soul, for example this line: ”I’m so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything”. It’s not a philosophy, It’s sad, but true, and I recognize myself in it. I do realize that means I should (ha there is the ‘should’) change something about my philosophy, but again, it’s not that easy.


2. in your ‘west usa’ series, you managed to capture landscapes and life/death with such a raw clarity, was your approach to these subjects different from your other work?

I started the trip after a few months of printing black and white and spending heaps of money, so I had no other option than using my digital camera. I did shoot one roll of film, but over a thousand digital ones in those 3 weeks. It’s easier to photograph digital, but I feel less connected to what I see, when I do so. I feel less and that’s why I stick to film. Probably because of the fact that I didn’t use film, it was easier for me to photograph, for example, that dead deer. I knew that if it would be too hard for me, I could delete it as soon as I had it. With film, it’s there, I can’t throw away film, so it would lay in your drawer, your room, your place, your life. It could be haunting in a way. Anyway, those weeks were the best weeks of my life. I’ve often said ‘let’s go somewhere unknown tomorrow’, but until january 2009 I never actually did it. It was beautiful, I’ve never been more grateful than I was then.

3. how many places have you traveled?

Not that many until last year, when I went abroad for a year. I shared a room with Sabrina and in that year I’ve been to quite some beautiful places in the US. New York was one of them. I loved the city, and admired how one could feel so at ease in such a big city. Ok, we woke up everyday by 7am to see New York awakening instead of rushing, but I still felt great there, while usually I prefere calmer places better. Another place I went to was Zion, where I forgot my heart, it’s so beautiful, the people were almost surreal. I don’t mean dreamlike, but beautifully down-to-earth, and not putting themselves but nature first, I must return there one day to pick my heart up again, and stay there for a bit. And become more like them.


4. a lot of your recent posted work is black and white. is there an aesthetic reason for this? do you self-develop/print? 



I miss colour terribly, but I just started studying photography in Sint Lukas, Brussels, and since our first year is black and white only, I barely/ don’t have time to shoot colour. I love black and white, printing it is nicer than colour, but it don’t think it’s as much my cup of tea as colour is.


5. the way you find your compositions and your light are remarkable, how often are these photos made on days that you go out specifically to take photos as opposed to days where you are just out and have a camera? do you always carry a camera with you? 


Most of them are taken on days where I accidentally have my camera with me. Accidentally, because I rarely have it with me. I wish I would take it more often, but I’m not a ‘decesive-moment’ photographer, so I’m not really needy of doing so. Unless I’m bored, or I have schoolassignments. Then mostly they’re made up in my head already, and selfportraitures. But I seem to love the ones taken on moments that were a coincidence of beauty, best. Light, discoveries of places, the clothes one wears that day, the way someone bends forward…

6. how do you feel about your photography? what part of you does it fulfill or drive?
Gosh… I like them, in that way that they’re memories. I have trouble remembering good things in life, I seem to forget them too easily. And my camera helps me with memorizing. And the images I took, whether they’re made up in my head first or not, whether they seem hopeful or melancholic or painful, they’re always about things that happened to me, things I felt or saw, and I’m happy they did, because they’re about life as I live it. I don’t think every image has an amusing story with it for strangers, but they do make me feel when I see them again. And some people seem to feel or see that for themselves, even though they weren’t there themselves. That’s fulfilling for me.



7. where do you see photography in your life in the future? 

For myself, everywhere, always. I really can’t be more specific.

8. one photographer/artist that everyone should check out right now?
Mark Borthwick

Official Site

Wendy Bevan

Wendy Bevan is a fashion photographer. She doesn't use £2K Canon DSLRs and arrays of flashguns. She shoots on good old Polaroid, and styles in shades of circus-burlesque. Kind of a paradox, since fashion is all about bleeding edge newness, and all of her photos look like they've been stored in an attic for sixty years. Somehow though, it works, and it's wonderful - her CV includes shoots for Russian Vogue, Italian Marie Claire, The Independent, The Observer, Nylon, V Magazine, Qvest, POP Magazine, I-D and more. Eish!

Tell me about your equipment. You shoot a lot on Polaroid, right? What's the attraction?

I have a really simple set up, and most of the time use natural light. I don't believe in overloading shoots with unnecessary equipment. The beauty is there already, and my job as a photographer is to find it and capture it within an image. That doesn't necessarily mean more equipment is needed.
I love the magic of the Polaroid, and the instant beauty that I am able capture within each sheet of film is unique every time. It allows me to work freely and express the most intricate of details subtly. Indeed I have an affection for the format. It is wonderful. The properties of the film naturally evoke the feeling of nostalgia, through its dream-like qualities.

And they've just announched the Polaroid factory is going to be reopened! Hoorah! What else is going to be IMPORTANT in 2009?

World Peace!

One item of clothing to erase from history and another to cherish please.

I'm surprised that flourescent Lycra has become a trend again. It was wrong the first time round - surely we realised then? The corset should always be treasured, and heels.


Rate the following in order of importance: model, setting, pose, styling.
This is difficult! A great shoot is the combination of all of these things being perfect, and a fantastic team. But, i'd say A) Setting B)Styling C) Model D) Pose.

What's been your most interesting/weird/innovative shoot, assignment or collaboration?

In the early days when I first started shooting, I think I was probably a bit more experimental. I used to dress models in very abstract creations that I had made, and then photograph them. There is always a sense of chaos behind the scenes, which I couldn't work with out! Every collaboration turns out to be interesting and different from the last.

What are you working on at the moment?

Several projects. I am going away on a trip soon to Key West, shooting for Italian Marie Claire, which I am really excited about. The shoot is based on 50's pinup imagery.

(http://www.dontpaniconline.com)




Official Site

Todd Hido

Todd Hido (b.1968, Kent, Ohio) is an American contemporary artist and photographer. Currently based in San Francisco, much of Hido’s work involves urban and suburban housing across the U.S., of which the artist produces large, highly detailed and luminous color photographs.
(wiki)


Official Site

Marco Trinchillo

Ben Tour

We all have secrets. Some are harmless and disappear like loose change or toenail clippings in the cushions of our couch. Others are more embarrassing, the type we’d like to erase from our memories—if of course we could do so without having our brains scrambled via lobotomy. Unfortunately, life’s not that simple. Secrets often slip from the mouths of the people entrusted to keep them safe, signaling not only the betrayal of an intimate agreement, but a ripple effect that’s nearly impossible to stop. Whether whispered at cocktail parties or transmitted across time zones during late night phone conversations, secrets travel in a manner all their own. It’s a rather compelling social phenomenon, and a perfect example of the type of scenario that piques the interest of a curious observer like Ben Tour.

The Vancouver-based painter and illustrator—who has forged a successful career translating his fascination with human behavior into beautifully dense character portraits—can best be described as a sort of visual anthropologist. For the better part of a decade Tour has catalogued and archived an oddly fascinating gallery of characters assembled from scraps of truth and fiction gathered from everyday life.

“I would describe it as a visual diary of characters and personalities,” says the 29-year-old Toronto-born artist, in reference to his work. “My approach is different every time. But yeah, I steal parts of different things and bring them together—interesting people both real and imagined, and animals and objects that they connect with that are visually appealing. I think my most successful work has a definite mystery to it that lets the viewer interpret their own story.”

While viewer interpretation does play a major role in the way Tour’s work is received, personal connection is equally as important. The abundant emotional content built into each of his pieces is at once intimidating and mesmerizing. In one portrait a bald old man with squinty eyes, crow’s feet, and a beak-like nose peers out from behind a pair of oversized black-rimmed glasses. His gaze is skeptical but fixed, as though he’s sizing up an unseen adversary. Another depicts a woman, sullen, sitting by herself beside two deer and an old typewriter—crimson-colored flowers scattered at her feet. The expression on her face is cold and detached, and the bowed arch of her spine seems to reveal an excess of grief.

Tour’s uncanny ability to capture these minute gestures and waning expressions with his feverish strokes and emotive lines forms the foundation of his distinctive style. Most importantly however, his choice of subjects is what intimately informs the direction of each piece. Rarely are the men in his portraits handsome or confident, instead they appear corpulent and misguided, emaciated and overwrought—too concerned with their own neuroses to be bothered by the notion of societal norms.

Tour’s female subjects, however, are portrayed in a much different light. Flaws and imperfections are, for the most part, hard to discern at first glance. Pouty lips and long sensual necklines punctuate attractive, symmetrical faces. Thin arms and long slender legs appear designed intently for Fashion Week runways. But closer scrutiny, particularly with regards to the eyes, hints at a more complicated reality lurking beneath each subject’s surface.

“It’s all in the eyes,” Tour explains. “If the character is looking right at you they want your attention, look away and they take you with them. I try to make the females look strong and fragile—one emotion for each eye.

The human figure has always been my thing,” he adds. “As a kid I always started my drawings from the eyes and worked outwards—they always seemed like the most important part of a person. [Then] I got really serious about drawing [while] in high school—I was constantly doodling—and just haven’t stopped.”
(matthewnewton.us)


Official Site

Richard Kern

Richard Kern (born: North Carolina, 1954) has lived and worked in New York City since 1979. In the eighties, he produced a series of short films that now are recognized as the central works of the movement now known as the Cinema of Transgression. In the 90’s he switched to photography full time and occasionally directed music videos for bands like Sonic Youth and Marilyn Manson. Kern has published nine books and is a regular contributor to a variety of international publications.

One afternoon in 1971, I skipped my 10th grade classes to hitchhike 30 miles to a mall in Rocky Mount NC on interstate 95. Heading north to get back home, a beat-up old car full of young NYC glam girls returning from Florida stopped for me. I piled in and was immediately captivated. Theirs was a world known to me only through magazines and movies. They told me stories of rock stars they knew and had sex with. They had weird haircuts. Vinyl hot pants, cut-off shorts, halter tops and plafforrn shoes barely concealed their vitality. I sat there in the back seat; crammed between two cute "older girls" (they were eighteen or nineteen) with my mouth hanging open like the hick that I was.

I had already been exposed to photography at this time by my father. As editor of the local newspaper, his job included taking photos of the events he wrote about. -Throughout my adolescence, I accompanied him on night-time assignments to photograph rural news events like car wrecks, drownings or political rallies. In my young mind, "got to go and get a shot" meant an adventure was in the making. My father encouraged my interest by teaching me how to make a camera from a can and how to use the darkroom. I immediately began developing my voyeuristic tendencies.

Now I'm a hick living in NYC. All the photographs in New York Girls (with a few exceptions) were taken in one of the two apartments I've had there since 1979.

My first apartment / studio was a six-room railroad at 529 E.13th Street between Avenues A and B. In this building were three apartments that bagged and distributed heroin, two shooting galleries and several other young artist types like me that moved there for the cheap rent. I converted one room to a darkroom and three others to a workspace where I shot photos of all my friends for use in little Xeroxed magazines I produced. In 1983, I purchased a Super-8 movie camera for five dollars and began documenting my friends acting out "statements". I dragged my projector around to local clubs, showing my early shorts before bands or as wallpaper for huge acid parties. These films featured Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch, Lung Leg, Cassandra Stark, Sonic Youth, Tommy Turner, David Wojnarowitcz, Karen Finley, Audrey Rose, Clint Ruin and others. We became, thanks to Nick's manifestos and my photographs, visible as the "Cinema of Transgression". The characters in my films shot up drugs, pierced or cut themselves, beat each other up, sucked each other off, killed their parents, raped youngsters, etc. over harsh soundtracks produced by my friend Jim Thirlwell. The most popular of these films, FINGERED, was also the most controversial. At screening after screening, both in the States and abroad, I was routinely booed off the stage, attacked or shut down. Yet, the first time Lydia (the star and instigator of this movie) and I sat down to watch the finished product, she looked at me and said "This isn't hard enough". To me, making these films was like taking a big, fat, smelly dump then standing back and watching people marvel over it.

Around 1987, my lifestyle caught up with me. I got rid of most of my possessions, gave up my apartment and fled to San Francisco. One year of hiding from myself and running around every night with various scary petty criminals sent me running back just as quickly to New York.

Since 1988, I've been living on 3rd Street between Avenues C and D. One thing I'd managed to hang onto throughout my "dark period" was my cameras. I began doing construction work in the daytime and shooting photos whenever I could. Film Threat Video picked up the films I'd been self distributing for years and made them available all around the world. The notoriety I'd established with these films helped me when it came to finding new models to work with. Most of the photos in this book trace me "re-claiming my camera eye" as I've tried to find a replacement for the blood spattered imagery I'm generally known for.

I eventually began producing movies again and made a few rock videos but realized that my true interest is in taking photographs. For me, nothing compares to the experience of building an environment with light then adding a living person as an unknown to make a temporal image. All photographers take pictures so they can tell themselves "I was there". New York Girls shows where I was for the last fifteen years.

The models are New York girls by my definition. At some point, they have all lived in Manhattan, drawn by that yearning for excitement and lifestyle intensity that motivates everyone that moves there. I don't think that there are any Manhattan natives in this book. Some of the women came from nearby Long Island and some arrived from as far away as Japan but they all became New Yorkers by spending time in the downtown scene looking for fun.

(official site)

Richard Kern in conversation with Matthew Higgs: New York 2004.

MH: I believe your father was a photographer?

RK: Not exactly. My father was the managing editor of a daily local newspaper in North Carolina. He was someone who took photographs out of necessity: all the reporters doubled up as photographers, my father included. So calling him a photographer would be, I guess, a stretch. He would simply go on an assignment to cover a story and have to take some photographs whilst he was there. I grew up in a very dull paper-mill town in the South: a place with just one movie theatre, so my father being both a newspaper editor and occasional photographer seemed, at least to a child, like an exciting job.

MH: Did you accompany your father on his assignments?

RK: Yeah. He would take me along from time to time. I spent a lot of my childhood sitting around waiting for him to get finished whilst he was took pictures of people at the local Moose Lodge. Occasionally there were a few interesting trips: like the time he took me to a drowning, or to car crashes, and the time we went to a Ku Klux Klan rally.

MH: How old would you have been?

RK: Around six or seven years old.

MH: Do you remember having any interest in photography as a child?

RK: When I was in Fifth Grade, as part of a science project, my father showed me how to make a pinhole camera. He showed me how to load and process film, and how to take pictures. As a kid I always built model cars, which I was always winning trophies for! I would photograph scenes as if the models were racing down a road, except it was just a set up on the rug in my bedroom, so they weren't really that convincing, but when you are a kid it really looked like the real thing!

MH: What music were you listening to?

RK: The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, and then later the The Ramones. At that time you would go to a party with your Ramones record and put it on and the other people would want to kill you! That kind of reaction just doesn't seem possible now, but at the time it was for real.

MH: When did you move to New York?

RK: Around 1978, or 1979. I had an eight month lay-over in Philadelphia , where I continued putting out the fanzines. Which, when I think back on it, was a direct extension of what my father was doing: he was basically doing a 'fanzine' for my home town - which is what a local newspaper was. When I eventually got to New York it was a whole different thing. I still made fanzines though: I would just leave them lying around everywhere, and people would just stumble across them. The only contact information was a PO Box number.

Brad Wallis

Photographing nudes has provided intrigue and inspiration since I began shooting in 1991.

I suppose I grew up with the same dream that a lot of boys had, to become a Playboy photographer.

What I realized as I grew older and started taking my own shots is that's really not how most of us are. We aren't perfect, we don't always wear jewelry and high heels and there are actually men in the world who are sexual beings too.

What I began to find fascinating was the amount of vulnerability that people felt comfortable sharing with me when they took off their clothes for my camera.

I think it surprised me at first. A glance of lust here, a glimpse of pain there. It soon became what I tried to capture with my photography, the reality and vulnerability of the people who chose to reveal themselves to me.

When I started finding models who felt comfortable opening up to my camera sexually it was like a fountainhead, a great, untapped resource of primal human emotion that spoke to the deepest parts of my soul. Here was a place where all the facades of civilization were stripped away leaving only the raw, pulsing core of our beings.

Here was communication without the need for words. It is a place where our senses take over and the mundane aspects of our day to day lives wash away like dust in the rain leaving only the true and honest essence of our deepest, most primal selves.

These are the things I see and these are the things that I try to capture.

Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I just take pretty pictures.

(from official site)

Ellen Von Unwerth (Revenge)

Last week was LA, yesterday was London and tomorrow is New York, but right now Ellen von Unwerth has a moment to speak, and sits slumped in a red 1950s armchair, long legs sprawling out across the parquet floor of her Paris office. Beside her feet are white cardboard boxes with black felt-tip markings that say things like "George Michael St Tropez Sept 99", "Interview Sheryl Crow" and "Vogue Germany Diamond Tiaras".

She's wearing black cords, Reebok trainers and a beige fake-fur cardigan thingy. Her off-white peroxide curls shoot out of dark roots, the blonde frizz giving her a slightly madcap look. Her frame is still girlishly thin, and her conversation is enhanced by her long white hands which flap around like demented puppets. When she laughs (often, and very loudly) you notice the large, goofy teeth which, back in her modelling days, framed by lipstick and shot by Helmut Newton or Oliviero Toscani, metamorphosed into a dazzling smile. And when she stops laughing the overbite gives her a subtle but permanent pout; on little details like this, successful modelling careers are made or broken.

In Von Unwerth's case, most definitely made. German-born, she posed for the world's greatest photographers in the most exotic locations, made a packet and worked continuously for a decade. And then, with infuriating ease, she picked up a camera, started taking snaps of the other girls on shoots, and became one of the top fashion photographers. On the way, she and her French partner Christian, a DJ and radio programmer who also acts as her business manager, had a daughter and moved to New York. But the family soon returned to France where they now split their time between a large apartment in Paris's 15th arrondissement and their country house in Normandy.

You almost certainly know her work, even if you've never consciously studied it. Most recently you would have seen the sly and subversive "Africa- print" campaign for Diesel, featuring only black models loafing around in jeans, jewellery and halter-neck tops, and overprinted with faux African newspaper headlines such as "Africa Agrees to Financial Aid to America".

Over the years you will have seen her sexy, playful images in US, Italian and British Vogue, Vanity Fair, Interview, The Face, L'Uomo Vogue, Dazed & Confused and i-D, and just about any other major fashion magazine you can name. Her advertising campaigns include Guess Jeans, Diesel, Chanel, Katharine Hamnett, Miu Miu, Bluemarine and Adidas. Older male readers may even remember seeing a young Carrie Otis and Claudia Schiffer in the Guess campaign of the late 1980s - both shot, of course, by Von Unwerth.

But wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves. We haven't even talked about the circus yet! As if her life didn't already read like a teen girl's fantasy, at the age of 18 Von Unwerth saw the Circus Roncalli in Munich, fell in love with the ringmaster, and joined the troupe. It was a "very poetic" and arty type of circus, created by a bunch of Austrian singers and poets. "As soon as I saw it, I said, `I have to join!' It was so romantic." Her duties included assisting the clown and handing the blades to the knife-thrower. It was while working in this circus by night and studying by day that she was spotted - aren't they all? - walking along the street, minding her own business. She'd just come out of college when a photographer rushed up and said... well, you get the picture. And, of course, until then she'd never dreamed of becoming a model, right?

"Actually, I was already thinking about it that time, dreaming about it," she says with refreshing honesty. "People had started to say I should go into modelling. But I didn't expect anything. It was Bavaria, and when you're skinny in Bavaria, well, that's not beautiful. In Bavaria they like the girls to be..." Her hands cup a pair of large invisible breasts, "...you know, quite round, big ladies." Her laugh goes off like a firecracker.

But in Paris they like their girls slim and leggy. So Von Unwerth, born in Frankfurt, moved to the French capital, where she signed for the Elite agency, which in those days lived up to its name. It was 1974. She was 20.

"I wasn't one of those young ones like they have now. They're too young these days. I sometimes think they should be playing. They should be with their friends, having fun. Not in that harsh environment."

Aha! So, as a photographer and the mother of a 12-year-old girl, she would agree some of the girls we see in magazines today, girls in their mid-teens, are too young to be sexy?

"No, a girl can be sexy when she's 14."

But surely we shouldn't be looking at girls and saying they're sexy when they're so young?

"You shouldn't say it to them, but they can be. Often they are. That's natural, they see that everywhere. They want to see what other girls look like, they want to be sexy a little bit, like the girls in the videos and the magazines."

But is that natural?

"Well, I think girls grow up much faster now, but I think it's natural. But I wouldn't want my daughter to be a model... I don't think it's a very fulfilling job. I think it's not creative. I was doing it for 10 years and I wasn't very happy with the way that people judge you just for your outside, the surface. It's kind of... a bit of a waste of time. It can be fun, too. But, basically, I'd rather she does something that is more creative."

"I think she could. But she grew up with it, so she's not really interested at all. Because her mother was a model, and for a while I was doing lots of pictures at home so there were always models coming to the house, so modelling is a very normal everyday thing for her, she doesn't find the idea exciting. Actually she's a little bit against it. When she sees models on TV she says, `Oh, you know, modelling is really a stupid profession, isn't it?'"

How do you feel, I ask, when she says that?

"Well, I have to agree a little bit you know. I love fashion, but seen from the outside there is something a little bit ridiculous about it when you see the girls going down the runway," she says brightly, not at all phased, "looking like soldiers. And you know, they have to do that silly walk..."

She didn't have to walk like that in her modelling days, she says, because it was a different era and modelling was more relaxed. "I was dancing up and down the runway. It was more fun then, the whole thing was less mediatisee. The supermodel thing made it very serious. But actually, now the supermodel thing is almost finished again. Apart from Kate Moss, who else is so famous and still working on the runway? I mean, someone who really touches the public in the same way, like Claudia and Linda did?"

One of Von Unwerth's great talents is her ability to spot a future star. In 1992 she made a short film called Inferno! which featured a largely unknown Kate Moss. Either side of that, she brought Claudia Schiffer and then Eva Herzigova to public attention almost single- handedly. Most recently she was the first to find Natalia Vodianova, the top girl right now, and the first to do a really big campaign with her. How does she pull it off? It's always accidental, she says, there's no systematic search. "Something always pushes us together. With Claudia Schiffer some magazine called me and asked me shoot her. I wasn't so excited about her. But when I looked at the pictures - wow, she looked like Brigitte Bardot! Yeah! And then we did a session to push that look, and people went crazy about her. But I didn't expect that."

Perhaps it all comes down to empathy. She clearly loves the girls she works with, and they trust her. "Her pictures are sexy with a nice sense of humour," says Eva Herzigova. "It's not vulgar, it's always funny. She was a model before, so she knows what it's like to be in front of the camera." Herzigova's fellow model Karen Mulder agrees: "You always have a good time and she takes pictures while you're having fun. Actually, she makes it very easy." And even super- stern Anna Wintour, editor-in- chief of US Vogue, has a kind word: "She has a much looser approach than the more standard photographers. And I think her wit and looseness are part of her charm."
Another of her gifts is the way she can get pretty girls to open their legs for the camera and appear blissfully unselfconscious while doing it. They're usually wearing underwear, so the pictures could hardly be described as obscene or pornographic, though some are undoubtedly provocative and, sometimes, unsettling. Generally, though, it's all good clean fun, a sanitised hedonism with lots of black stockings, high heels and lacy panties, lashings of champagne, masks and other elements of erotic fancy dress, and the occasional swish of a riding crop to keep the senses keen, the flesh alert. All of this is often played out amid the faded grandeur of hotels or chateaux or Parisian boudoirs, on sweeping lawns or in vintage limousines.This is certainly the case with Revenge, her latest photo book, with images revolving around a camp tale of feisty but naive young lovelies falling into the clutches of a sadistic baroness, who makes them do vile things like clean out the stables wearing only their undies. The text, based on an idea of Von Unwerth's, but written by novelist Harland Miller, borders on the farcical: "Extract from the secret journal of Emily: it has all been a horrid trick, our invitation here was one into slavery. The beastly chauffeur whose attentions I can't believe I encouraged, smirked as the Baroness ripped off our clothes. Now we are forced to work in shameful underwear and very high heels that make a dash for the road impossible. Also the locals are all in-breds and to throw oneself on their mercy wearing only frou-frou bra and panties is to invite disaster. One would rather stay here and be whipped!"

Less assured hands would make a pig's ear of this silk purse, but what elevates Von Unwerth's photos above tasteful smut is the sense of playfulness in her work; her models look at ease with themselves, relaxed. This loose, unstructured, yet very intimate approach is seductively easy on the eye (and the conscience, for that matter), and devoid of the grasping, possessive quality found in so many of her male contemporaries - who often photograph women with a butterfly collector's eye, as if pinning exotic specimens to a board.

"Yeah, I know what you mean, I see those pictures all the time. I don't know, maybe they don't enjoy their work," she says, flashing that smile again. "I enjoy photographing people. I try to make them feel comfortable and relaxed. It works - most of the time."

Her favourite working method, she says, is to invent a loose storyline and work fluidly, using the standard fashion photographer's equipment: a Mamiya, Contax or Nikon M6. She prefers black and white because of its "magical" properties, finding it more "emotional" and "dreamy". Her trademark blurriness is often a happy accident.

"My pictures are quite instant, I don't have people posing, I try to capture something," she says, snapping her long fingers loudly. "So you have to feel it, anticipate it, know when something's going to happen. That's why I like girls who move, who come up with things, who play and enjoy themselves and have fun, not just sitting there thinking, `Oh, I'm so pretty.' I want to be surprised, I want to follow something, some energy or emotion. When it's too static I get bored in a matter of seconds. It's like, OK, I got it. Now what?"

Often, she says, a special picture will present itself in the last few seconds, when the day's work is officially over. "At the end of the session the models relax and it's often then you get the best shot. You have to wait until they let their guard down." And when your life story reads like Von Unwerth's, you can probably rest assured that something magical will happen, sooner or later.

The Independent on Sunday
Dec 8, 2002
by Alix Sharkey
http://findarticles.com

http://www.staleywise.com