Natural setting
It's a misconception that people in bathing suits are (necessarily) superficial, to paraphrase a title of a film. This clearly comes across in the photographs taken by Annelie Vandendael. Joyful and vibrant, humorous and sensual, these subtle yet beguiling images are at odds with the run of the mill stereotype fashion conventions and boldly challenge the diktat of displayed perfection on glossy paper. "A few years ago, I began to reconsider how female beauty could be represented by redefining the concepts of what is considered as being beautiful. At that time, in many magazines, women had to be perfect, beautiful and slim," explains this graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (Belgium). "I hate images that are too manipulated! It is my personal goal to show the truly genuine beauty of people, including their imperfections. That's what gives them their uniqueness." It's not without a certain irony that this Belgian artist (whose first client just happened to be a certain Paul Smith) named this series 'Sois belle'. Thus inviting the so-called weaker sex to break free from the status quo… "And above all, don't be silent!" The artist depicts "the human form as a natural element rather than an object." Hence the presence of heterogeneous fauna, sometimes in close harmony with our fellow nude bipeds. To capture authentic beauty, this thirty-year-old favours purity of image and this is why she is never separated from her Hasselblad camera. Although central to these ingenious compositions, these young women ("travel friends") also play hide-and-seek with the onlooker, discretely hidden and captured within a roll of film: here behind a pink flamingo, there a megaphone... "The authenticity of the human body speaks for itself, the faces are an unnecessary impediment. Personalities are revealed through poses, landscapes or colours." So in a nutshell, or shall we say 'through the lens of a Hasselblad', no tricks, but a whole load of glamour. Julien Damien
Visit : www.annelievandendael.com
Read : Annelie Vandendael's interview on 'les magazines.com'
