Bettina Von Zwehl
The process of sitting in front of a camera while someone waits to capture a moment of your life is incredibly invasive, especially when one is required to behave in a certain manner. Von Zwehl has built up an international reputation for creating unsettling photographic portraits, in which the subjects are restricted within certain criteria. In the series “An Anatomy of Control”, she has focused her documentary style on the portraits of children. Usually, photo's of children are taken by parents or relatives and hence contain a certain warmth. Von Zwehl contradicted this convention by giving the control back to the children, who were allowed to activate the shutter themselves, while posing however they may choose. Von Zwehl then paired images together according to similarities in the children's height, postures or expressions.
In my opinion, the resulting images are a far cry from that which we expect to see when looking at photo's of children. Firstly the images being black and white, and each child being given the same black outfit to wear gives the images a sense of clinical coldness that strongly resembles a traditional mugshot. This association makes it difficult to see the subjects as children at all, rather as the adults they will become. This is uncomfortable in itself. What I find even more uncomfortable however is that even though these children have been given charge of the shutter and the destiny of their own image, the process of portraiture is no less invasive.
TITLE: Bettina von Zwehl: Lombard-Freid Fine Arts
SOURCE: New Art Examiner 28 no5 F 2001
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