Guide to Unique Photography

Our first association with gypsy girls is often those mediocre paintings of a woman with voluminous raven hair, flashing eyes and a bosom yearning for freedom. But in the photo of four young gypsy girls that Wilhelm Brasse made in Auschwitz at the end of 1944, there is no trace of such pseudo romance.

Loretta Lux (Dresden, 1969) was trained as a painter at the art academy of Munich. She starts photographing with a passion in 1999, but never without forgetting the art of painting. In her studio, Lux photographs models in vintage clothing against a white background. Later she inserts these images digitally into a setting that she photographed earlier.

Loretta Lux is hot property. From her new home in Monaco, the German photographer is travelling all over the world to exhibit and sell her work. Her main photographs consist of portraits of children in isolated settings, who look away or straight at you with an almost arrogant self-consciousness. GUP asks Loretta Lux what makes her work so special.

To keep your pictures in excellent condition for many years, you have to take good care of them. Restorations are often possible (“nobody will even notice it”), but not ideal. Especially in photography, since careful conservation may save you the costs of an expensive restoration. Proper conservation however involves that little bit more than a storage box at room temperature.

Koos Breukel (The Hague, 1962) mostly creates series, in basic black-and-white. For this special publication, he chose colour due to the delicacy of the subject. All models in Cosmetic View have an eyeprosthesis. Most have one healthy eye and one prothesis, others are entirely blind and have two. A prosthesis is intended as a form of camouflage, so people can live with a handicap without showing it too much.

When Erwin Springveld decided to study journalism at Amsterdam University in 1977, he was not sure what he wanted to do with his life. The 18-year-old would-be journalist could not suspect that, during the next 30 years, he would change his last name to Olaf and become one of Holland’s best-known photographers. GUP samples a taste of Olaf’s new series Hope and shows how he has accomplished his current status.

Victor Bergen - Henegouwen (1963) seems to have every element of the perfect composition under control. Hard lines, a subtle choice of colours, silky texture and a soft shine. It is not surprising, when you consider that Bergen-Henegouwen was a photographer who worked in fashion and styling for many years. Working with so many different people in as many places nourished his interest in the way people react to surroundings, whether they feel at home there or not. See and judge for yourself.

Photo editing has been around since the invention of photography. Now that digital photography has taken flight, with rapid development of new software and hardware at lower prices, digital editing and manipulation of photos are gaining ground rapidly and ‘fake’ photos are increasingly hard to identify. Where lies the limit between acceptable photo editing and conscious manipulation?