Bettina von zwehl biography
- Bettina von Zwehl (born 1971) is a German artist who lives and works in London.
- Bettina von Zwehl (b.1971, Germany) is renowned for her innovative work in photography, spanning portraiture, still life, installation, and archival.
- Interested in photography from a young age, Munich-born Bettina von Zwehl (b.1971) worked as a photographer's assistant in Rome before moving to London to study.
- •
Artist Bettina von Zwehl has built an international reputation for her subtle, distinctive photographic portraits.
This HLF funded commission offers the artist’s response to portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, on display in the Queen’s House. Bettina has created seven portrait miniatures of young women from Thomas Tallis School, Kidbrooke, recorded at a moment when they are making crucial decisions about their futures in the workplace or in higher education.
We spoke to Bettina about miniatures as an artform and the techniques she employed to create these unique photographic miniatures.
Portrait miniatures draw you close.
They shut out the world around you. At the same time, they can exude a sense of power over the viewer.
Looking at portrait miniatures feels quite intimate, especially if you get to handle the object and contemplate the sitter in the palm of your hand.
I especially love miniatures made by artists, like Hans Holbein, Nicholas Hilliard or Isaac Oliver during the 16th century.
Creating the fiction of the pose.
Light is really important. I used a si
- •
Bettina von Zwehl was born in Munich in 1971 and received an MA from the Royal College of Art in 1999.
Her photographic portraiture has a minimal quality and each series focuses on a single, simple construct. The sitters will assume a uniform pose, wear an identical item of clothing or be photographed at a particular moment, i.e just moments after they have woken up. The artist’s arrangement of these images draws out inherent similarities but also starkly highlights the striking individuality of the sitter’s faces.
Her work has been exhibited in a number of galleries in Europe and the USA. In 2002, von Zwehl participated in the exhibition Reality Check: Recent Developments in British Photography and Video that was jointly organized by the British Council and The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Her series Alina was exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2005. Her work was included in Photography 2005 at Victoria Miro Gallery, London and has been shown at Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York and Galleria Laura Pecci, Milan.
Her work is in
- •
Bettina von Zwehl
German artist
Bettina von Zwehl (born 1971[1]) is a German artist who lives and works in London. She has centred her artistic practice on photography, installation and archival exploration evolving through artist-residencies in museums. Her work explores representations of the human condition and human concerns through an observational approach combined with a distinctive use of the profile view and silhouette that continues to underpin her practice.[2]
Career
Von Zwehl was born in Munich and studied in London, receiving a BA in Photography from the London College of Printing and an MA in Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art, London.[3]
She began making portraits as a student at the Royal College of Art, using a 19th-century methodology that she encountered as a photographer's assistant in Rome, working on 10 in × 8 in (250 mm × 200 mm) film with a large-plate camera.[4] Most of her work has been in the studio. Reviews of her early work often commented on its conc
Copyright ©bandtide.pages.dev 2025