Aug 21

Aug 21 Photographic Alphabet: K is for Anouk Kruithof

Untitled (#11) 2007 photograph c print on dibond 78.5-100 cm © Anouk Kruihtof

Project: Becoming Blue

Anouk Kruithof's series Becoming Blue comprises 21 portraits and three spatial stills. They are presented in different formats and reveal Kruithof's highly exceptional approach to the topic of portrait photography. During extended sessions, which Anouk Kruithof calls one-to-one performances she did not usually work behind the camera but in the rest of the room, frequently pressing the trigger by remote control.

Untitled (#03) 2006 photograph c print on dibond 78.5-100 cm © Anouk Kruithof

Untitled (#09) 2007 photograph c print on dibond 78.5-100 cm © Anouk Kruithof

Reactions out of the blue. Blue is a color we associate with infinity and meditative calm both in art historical as in psychological meaning. The poses and gestures of the persons portrayed obviously contradict such associations - a stylistic means that Kruithof deliberately chooses in order to visualize different emotional and psychological states during a process of surprise or even confrontation. Kruithof's thinking in color and in the characteristics of pictures is the clearest evidence that, for Anouk Kruithof, the process of elaborating the photos is not coincidental or done for its own sake, not an experiment or test run, but a procedure carried out in accordance with the rules of beauty, in the knowledge of the characteristics of aesthetic perception - and thus artistically necessary.

Untitled (#39) 2008 photograph c print on dibond 78,5-100 cm © Anouk Kruithof

At the same time, she made constant but minor physical interventions to influence the person being portrayed, so that her photos capture the subject's gestures and facial expressions interaction to the unknown, irritation or stress