Svetlana J.
psychologist and artist ;
Holland-based



More about my work by
Paula Miklosevic Muhr

"For years now Svetlana has been photographing members of the Gothic subculture, to which she herself belongs. This has resulted in a visual archive of alternative behaviour, make-up and dress.

The portraits she makes speak of her ability to engage in a dialogue with the models, who play out their assumed roles in front of the camera.

Women and men in her photographs are surrounded by the aura of stars and fashion models, although they remain nameless.

Invariably exposed to direct photographic flash, their skin reveals no shades, marks or tactile features, so that the image is reduced to a play of even surfaces of glaring colors, and the idea of depth and space is erased.

This artificiality is amplified by a subtle digital manipulation, which may include the duplication of the model (mirror imaging), deletion of unwanted details and change of palette.

Referring to various genres and playing with esthetical conventions of fashion and advertising photography, while at the same time insisting on
contrived poses and backdrops further manipulated in the postproduction phase, these photographs come close to displaying the sensibility of camp.

The photographs uphold a significantly different idea(l) of beauty, informed by excess and kitsch, promoting the tendencies towards the conspicuous, overly sentimental and, also, decadent. The models' dress and make-up establish a particular visual code, which serves as a means to be both recognised and singled out, as a message to those around them, and as evidence of a wish to become the object of another's gaze. The images you are seeing here can be described as �exposure to the view in controlled
circumstances"."