NEELTJE DE VRIES, PHOTOGRAPHER

'Fluid' I think is an image that characterizes my work well. In an image I look for friction, friction. Eye-catching aesthetics and something that makes that waver, wring. Greensw for me enhance the sense of mystery. Spherical without feeling heavy. You see these hues a lot in my work. She seems almost made of rubber because of her skin and posture as she glides across the armchair. That in contrast with the angled straight lines in the background works very nicely for me. Images arise for me even before I have shot them. In everyday life. Looking at all sorts of things going on around me. It can even be that when I cycle past the garbage in Amsterdam on a rainy day, I see an object, or a piece of material of whatever, lying there and an image immediately emerges in my head. How many times have I stopped and driven back in my car to load stuff from the street into my car, because an image in passing immediately kept pulling at me. Or to lug it on the back of my bike to my studio. This armchair, from the thrift store, is an example of that.

I love playing with framing. What that does to an image. But what if the framing is also literally woven into the image. I play with this more often in my work. It is searching for the thin line between discomfort, credibility and pleasing. I was looking for what captures the right narrowness. That it is palpable. That's in both the narrowness of the walls I built in my studio for this image, and in the woman's pose. Before I photograph a model, I always have to feel for myself how a space or pose feels. This is also one of the reasons I portray women in my free work. I have to feel what I want to translate into my image. I don't know what it's like to move like a man. It's all about the little nuances. These I want to see reflected in my images. A loose hand, how hair slides along your face. You name it. You could say that in most of the pictures I shoot there is a piece of self-portraiture. That started when I was a 6-year-old drawing girls non-stop. And never really stopped. Only the medium has changed over the years.

I love it when images could have been a film still. That they are narrative. When I look at her now, to me she is a woman with a story. No longer that woman I stood in front of with my camera. Hands are always important in my work. How these move, you can translate so much emotion with that. The epic images I shoot are generally the ones I've had the longest time with myself. And also hang on the wall at my house. Where is she? Who is she? What is happening? I experience my own experience with them. I want to intrigue the viewer, but actually even more myself. I can feel the water on her skin with this image. Her drenched hair. And precisely because of the cropping, it raises even more questions. I love a raw beauty in a woman. Unpolished. A portrait of an attractive woman merely captured beautifully does not move me. Sure, I think the women I shoot are all beautiful, but each of them has a raw edge. I find that much more interesting to work with than appearance alone.

Take a look at Neeltje de Vries' website here.