Biography

It is kind of weird to write my own biography since I am only 23 years old. Maybe I'll start with what brought me to photography.
After school, aged 18 years, I was really aimless. I grew up in my own fantasy world, between pink and black ballet tutu's, cute white ponies and lots of princess'gowns. The time I had, I spent dressing up like a doll and having chocolate and cake in my homecity Antwerpen together with my girlfriends. We were dramaqueens concerning boys and we decided that boys are hopeless and probably not very smart.
So days passed by, drinking tea, walking through the old museums, drawing, dreaming...and then suddenly the summerholidays were over and I had to decide what I wanted to do with my life.
Frankly I was too young to know what I wanted to do with my life... I just wanted to play.
So one of my friends came up with the idea to study photography. I joined her idea but was not really interested in photography though.
My father was in former times very busy with photography, and he had a complete equipment of nice Olympus camera's. That gave me a little comfort to start the education. My father would be always there to help me.

After 2 months of college, my friend quitted and some 3 years later I was the proud owner of a paper that says that I am a Master in Photography! How nice! So now I was ready for the real world?
I would say, no..

In that time I had learned some techniques you would never use in real life. Interesting but not necessary. I could develop my own films and make my own colour prints in real big sizes...whoohoo...
But during these 3 years I started to get a very high affection with portrait photograhy, and also with "freaks".
I would call my thesis "Reflective Freak / Freak Reflection" and I had a real good point for that title. (which you can read further on on my website).
By that time I was mainly portraiting gothic people. The funny thing about this was that my gothic models wanted to have this very creepy image, to shock people and to scare them...but in my pictures they looked like innocent children. I could somehow reflect my inner emotion in their face.
And that's what I still do. I use my models as mirror. They give me their person, and I give them my emotions.

You could ask what my pictures are reflecting actually. They absolutely do not reflect reality. (That's the last thing I would like to show to be honest.)
They reflect some kind of dreamworld where everybody is pretty and where life is magical. I make a lot of effort to get the right make up and clothes. That's why I also do every aspect of my picture myself. I search a location, a model, I do the make up and hairstyle and I make the clothes. Every detail is important, and often you dont see anything but a glance from the background and the clothes but the feeling that my models get by wearing these dresses and being in these great surrounding, gives me the opportunity to create the right expression and emotion in their face.

Another aspect from my photography are my selfportraits.
I was always surprised and shocked by my own reflection. Anytime I look in the mirror, I see another "myself". In my mind I never look the same and that scares me! So one day I got the idea to photograph all the aspects I thought to see in myself. To see the change, maybe to see some evolution or maybe to make sure that I am looking quite the same on every picture? I dont really know. But I found it an interesting project, and I enjoy it still.
Modeling myself gives me also a very close idea how to talk to my own models. I can explain them very detailed how they should stand, keep their head and get a certain look in the eyes. They just have to follow my voice while I take the pictures.

People often say that art should be shocking to be good. I dont share that opinion. Great examples for me are mostly old and romantic paintings, paintings that keep a dream, a secret or a mysterious kind of beauty. And that's just what I try to do... I want to create and show beauty, sometimes a dream, sometimes a fantasy, sometimes romantic, sometimes little nasty. Through my photographs I cherish the hope to share some beauty with other people, to open their eyes for their own inner worlds...

With love,
*viona*

nikkijung _narak