Timeless beauty
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| Sylvie Blum, selfportrait © Sylvie Blum |
Austrian-born Sylvie Blum started a career in modeling prior taking the helm as a photographer. She grew up in Germany and has travelled around the world. As a child she already knew she wanted to be an artist and photography, cinema, music, architecture and art became lifelong passions. She was very young when she started her career as an art and fashion model, in fact she was still at school. As a model she has been portrayed by photographers as important as Helmut Newton, Jeanloup Sieff, Jan Saudek, Andreas Bitesnich and erotic photographer Günter Blum for who she became model, muse and later his wife.They met in 1991 and she learned everything about lighting, composition, darkroom techniques and photography from him. Sylvie has published several art books and her work has become international known. Her work is inspired by photographers such as Leni Riefenstahl and Herb Ritts, focuses on atlethic female bodies and always in very aesthetically studied compositions. Currently a selection of her works are showed in the "Power meets poetry" exhibition at the Immagis Galerie in Munich along with the work of Italian photographer Giovanni Gastel.
Art makes me happy, it is important for me to feel conformable, safe and inspired in this world. It is the engine that keeps me going...the opposite of all the bad stuff happening.
Were you interested in working in arts before you started your career as a model?
Since I am 4 years old I wanted to become an artist. I painted, built, wrote, acted, designed. I told everyone around me that I will be an artist when I am all grown up. I created every day and thought about creating every second, since I can remember.
What differences have you found between the fashion and the artistic photography?
I personally make no difference of the genre of the the photograph....a good picture is a good picture and it doesn’t matter what it is about. There are so many deeper layers in seeing an image. Dividing it into abstract patterns, emotional patterns, graphic patterns and anything else in-between.
Why did you became passionated by photography?
Photography always fascinated me tremendously , the freedom to turn light into an image had this magic to me.
What artists have influenced you the most?
So many good art is out there...you can say for every day and state of mind there is an artist that will inspire, nurture and influence. It could be music, architecture, painting, sculpture, video installations, writing, performing, and so on...
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| Sylvie Blum Snake Woman , 2017 © Sylvie Blum courtesy IMMAGIS Galerie |
Your work focuses on atlethic female bodies, although you have worked also with male models, and always in very studied compositions. What about the perfect imperfection?
Sure I love imperfection... For example I made an entire series about my Fat Muse Angel. Her body is extremely fat and overly curvy. She is literarily huge and was the first fat person I saw naked. I love those images I made with her and they are very important to me...but people are afraid and very weird about imperfection. This is sad, I see beauty everywhere.
There are some of your works that are in black and white, but when you work the color I notice a predominance of pastel colors except for some details that gain prominence with a more intense tone. What is behind this tonalities selection?
I love colors and I am inspired by Pop Art and the use of colors. It needs to make sense to me why there is a certain color in my picture. If I use color there should be a reason for it. I want a certain color to dominate the image.
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| Sylvie Blum Candy Lips II , 2014 © Sylvie Blum courtesy IMMAGIS Galerie |
Minimalism is also a characteristic in your work which helps to highlight the body shape. What inspires you so much of the human body and mainly of the female?
Every body is so different and fascinating. It is the model that trusts into my vision to get naked in front of me, this will always be new and exciting to me. To eliminate distraction such as props, cloth or shoes keeps the image timeless and I like that. To highlight a body shape is hard work for the model, because it is very abstract and hard to get it right. The model needs to be able to adapt her own body image into something abstract and minimalistic, I always like to accept that challenge when I see it in front of me.
When do you feel you are in front a good work?
It is a wonderful feeling...you just know it when it happens...like everything falls in place and it feels right.
What photo would you have loved to make?
I am working on it !
Could you explain us a dream you have had while sleeping or a child memory?
When I was a child there was this book about symbolism, I looked at it over and over again. One image caught my eye and fascinated me endless. It was the painting “Caresses” by Fernand Khnopff. A woman half human and half cheetah stuck in my mind forever and became the inspiration to my well known Big Cat Series.
Power meets poetry
Exhibition at Immagis Galerie, Munich
26 October 2018 – 12 January 2019
A Sylvie Blum works selection available here
An interview by Juan Carlos Romero
Photos by Sylvie Blum © Sylvie Blum
www.sylvie-blum.com
courtesy IMMAGIS Galerie
All rights reserved