The Dutch photographer questions the viewer with her unique atmospheres that play with the bizarre and the comical, light and colors, abstraction and surrealism.
Wendelien Daan wears many hats. This native of Eindhoven, Netherlands, now based in Amsterdam, is a photographer, visual artist, creative director, director of photography, and short film director. Her portfolio is thus a constant questioning of what defines the image we look at and observe. This fashion design graduate from ArtEZ/University of the Arts quickly discovered her path: a love for storytelling through photography, both analog and digital. Since then, Wendelien Daan has traveled extensively, settling first in Amsterdam, then in New York and Paris, where she collaborated with numerous magazines (Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Madame Figaro…) and brands (Neiman Marcus, Nike). It was after the September 11 attacks in New York City, where she was at the time, that she decided to return to her Venice of the North to focus on Europe. Her portfolio explores themes of identity, equality, surrealism, abstraction, and alienation, with the image of the modern woman at the heart of her reflections.
Seizing the unexpected
Wendelien Daan immerses the viewer in atmospheres that are at once strange, whimsical, and unsettling, playing with the notion of perception. Her images manage to capture, astonish, and question the gaze. She manipulates the effects of light and shadow, colors, and situations, creating an aesthetic unique to her style. "I enhance their beauty in such a way that it embraces imperfection and often zoom in to transform forms into something unexpected.""She explains. Her work is thus an appealing combination of visual arts, both color and black and white, which she presents in numerous cultural and museum institutions worldwide. Today, Wendelien Daan continues her surreal series, alternating between studio shoots in her "beloved Amsterdam," as she calls it, and unusual locations for her editorials, commercial commissions, and personal projects. Examples include burned-out theaters in Lebanon, the streets of Tokyo, and Diamond Beach on the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon in Iceland, a famous spot that earned the nickname Diamond Beach for its icebergs sparkling in the sunlight."
Nathalie Dassa
Netherlands – Amsterdam
