‘I like the idea of turning the tables, subverting the male gaze. Sue is now looking at us.’ says Charlotte Colbert, the London-based artist behind one of the must-visit exhibits at Photo London this year.

Her work ‘Benefit Supervisor Sleeping’, 2017, offers a life-size image portrait of Sue Tilley, Lucian Freud’s iconic model. While creating an overall survey, the work alerts viewers to specific details such as Tilley’s foot or the paint spattered studio floors that Tilley was first painted in.

Photo London is at Somerset House 17th – 20th May 2018. See the full programme here.

Feature image credit: Charlotte Colbert, ‘Benefit Supervisor Sleeping’, 2017

Tags: Charlotte Colbert, Photo London

Growing up in Minsk, now Belarus, before moving to the United States and later France, Alexandra Catiere learned early on to immerse herself in a universe of her own. This is a skill Catiere has taken with her into her photography, where she documents intimate moments that all make a passing comment on the transient nature of time and the ephemerality of life.

Through her distinct visual language and exploration of both sensation and atmosphere, she manages to avoid the cliches of naked young people shot with flash on a 35mm point and shoot camera. Instead, her inspiration and style aligns itself more closely to that of the legendary Irving Penn, who she worked alongside in 2005 shortly after graduating from the International Centre of Photography (ICP). Her works are in the same nature of Penn’s—classical black and white images, begging the audience to study the world in which they are taken without a preconceived notion of context.

A new exhibition – Photo London – which has just opened in London at Somerset House, explores Catiere’s work in the form of a three-part series: ‘Here, Beyond the Mists’, ‘Land without Shadows’, and ‘Nobody Believes That I Am Alive’. The exhibition deals with themes such as time, realisation, life and death in a way that underscores Catiere’s own belief system “that death does not and can not truly exist, while memory still remains”.

When asked to describe the photographers work Nathalie Herschdorfer, the curator of this exhibition says: “Catiere’s photography is of an intimate and independent nature. It deals with the passing of time, outside of the narrative realisation. Time stands still. The beings and places that she depicts seem to come from a distant past but nonetheless seem to be anchored in the present. Catiere’s photographs enthral us, they seduce us and call us into question.”

The exhibition is on now, and runs until 22nd May 2016 at Somerset House, London, Booth F7.

Alexandracatiere.com // Somersethouse.org.uk

Tags: Alexandra Catiere, Irving Penn, Photo London, Somerset House