Press: "Elfie Semotan: Light as the Protagonist in Image-Making"

What happens when a model decides to change her position and step behind the camera? This premise served as the starting point for Elfie Semotan’s career—a photographer whose experience in the world of modeling granted her a unique perspective, allowing her to imbue her work with an exceptional command of light. She has stood out not only as a portraitist, but also in the fields of advertising, jewelry, and fashion photography.

 

 

Galería Campeche presents Elfie Semotan: Color y Carne / Color and Flesh, the artist’s first presentation in Mexico. The Austrian photographer has produced an extensive body of work over the past 50 years, spanning landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, and conceptual photography. Her prolific career in the world of fashion has earned her recognition for her ability to fuse reality and fiction, dissolving the boundaries between art, fashion, and life itself.

 

 

During a walkthrough of the halls of Galería Campeche, one can trace how the former model made the leap from the runway to working behind the camera. Yet her career in the fashion world was only just beginning. The artist established herself as a photographer in advertising, capturing objects such as jewelry and clothing, and later expanded her practice to explore portraiture, nudes, and more concept-driven work aligned with the art world.

 

 

Although her work spans numerous genres, it is her sharp attention to the everyday and the mundane that defines her practice. By manipulating light, focus, and perspective, Semotan activates the interstices between candid action and staging to highlight individuality, authenticity, and mood in each of her images. She has stated that light is the most significant factor in her photography, arguing that “. It defines a form or dissolves it. Light produces a photograph or destroys it.”

 

 

Organized by independent curators Úrsula Dávila-Villa and Anna Stothart, Color and Flesh presents a selection of Semotan’s landscapes, portraits, and still lifes spanning from 1990 to 2020. The exhibition features works that embody Elfie Semotan’s signature approach of capturing texture through light and flesh, as well as her compositional abstraction, which includes framing and cropping techniques used to deconstruct the ordinary.

 

 

 

 

The large-format photographs in the exhibition present two of Semotan’s favorite subjects: landscapes and still lifes. For these compositions, she directs her camera toward scenes that often go unnoticed and toward everyday or seemingly insignificant objects, which she elevates into photographic motifs, conveying a specific tenor.

 

 

 

Elfie Somatan website: semotan.com/

Galería Campeche: galeriacampeche.com