photography | owl's house london.

Most often a photographer of fashion and beautiful women, Carsten Witte’s current work focuses on the cycle of beauty and transience. His flawless and perfect women seem to be captured ‘like in a butterfly collection, forever preserved on the crest of their perfection’; caught at the moment before beauty is lost.

His interior photographs for me also appear to capture a moment – the point just before someone enters the room, or the point just after someone has left. Quietly, serenely captivating.

More Carsten Witte, here

More in the gallery, here

I first saw Maisie Broadhead’s work at her debut solo exhibition out of art school at Sarah Myerscough Gallery in Mayfair. An exhibition at the same gallery is now taking place, and her work is also being exhibited at the National Gallery and the Design Museum in London.

Exquisitely photographed, the lighting, composition, and attention to detail are superb. She has recreated the works of old masters – Vermeer, Valasquez, Hogarth – given the models a gender twist and dressed them in contemporary clothes. The richness of the imagery is the first thing one sees; a second look reveals the rather outrageous humour of a coke bottle with a brightly coloured straw, or the plucked eyebrow of a man where a voluptuous maiden would otherwise have been. The trick is played further as one initially perceives a painting; a much closer inspection reveals a beautifully orchestrated photograph.