Light leads our souls on the journey to reconciliation with
traumatic experience. During puberty we often wish to be able
to fly away from the unruliness of reality. At the same time it is
a time in which we find ourselves on wings convulsively flying us
into grown up life. This girl's resigned face, her vintage dress
with 'wings' and the fitting patterned background receding into
the shade want to carry us into the past, yet a minor detail
pierces us back into the present moment.
Flokje van Lith (The Netherlands, 1969) studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. For many years Van Lith worked as a portrait photographer commissioned by both companies and private clients. Since 2011 she focuses more on her independent work. After having completed her first autonomous series in 2011, it got selected immediately for the prestigious Photo Festival Naarden, soon after which participation in international exhibitions and art fairs followed. Van Lith's portraits of a subdued mood depict universal emotive states such as sorrow, solitude and melancholy and act as counterweight to our turbulent times. Inspired by personal childhood memories and temporary muses whom she encounters by chance, her images allude to the kind of parallel worlds young women can inhabit. In one telling reminiscence of childhood, Van Lith is playing a secret self-invented game in which she buries her dolls and fantasizes that being under ground opens doors to parallel universes. These imagined parallel worlds are part of what she recreates in her contemporary portraiture. Aside from childhood memories, Van Lith finds inspiration in the formal qualities and emotional substance of the portraits done by Flemish Primitives and Italian Renaissance masters. Photographing her muses and backgrounds in interior settings allows Van Lith to take full advantage of the incidence of light and of chiaroscuro. She uses a medium-format camera for its ability to record in great detail. During post-production she continues to labor over images for weeks and often months on end, until she arrives at the perfect marriage of models and the carefully chosen environments of decay. In short, her work can be characterized as painting with photography.
Awards International Color Awards 2016: 4 x Nominee, Category Fine-Art, Portrait, 1 x Honorable mention, Category Portrait.
International Photography Awards 2016: 3 x Honorable mention, Category Portrait, Fine Art.
International Kontinent Awards 2015: Third Place, Single Image, Fine Art.
International Photography Awards 2015: 8 x Honorable mention, Category Fine Art, Portrait, People.
Fine Art Photo Awards 2015: Professional Nominee, Category Portrait.
International Color Awards 2015: 8 x Honorable Mention, Category Fine Art, Portrait.
PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris 2014: Silver, Category Collage, Fine Art.
International Photography Award 2014: Second Prize, Category Portrait.
International Photography Award 2014: 8 x Honorable Mention, Category Portrait, Fine Art.
International Photography Award 2013, award: 3 x Honorable Mention, Category Portrait, Fine Art.
International Color Awards 2012, 2 x Nominee, Category Portrait, 2 x Honorable Mention, Category Portrait.
International Photography Award 2011, award: 1 x Honorable Mention, Category Portrait.
