SENTA SIMOND
January 23 – February 29, 2020.
Danziger Gallery is pleased to announce the first American exhibition of work by the young Swiss photographer Senta Simond.
Simond's work focuses on an intimate approach to the female body and portraiture. Her photographs – distinctive in their slightly off-kilter approach to composition and expression - feature a circle of acquaintances and respond to the connection that can occur between artist and sitter under the right context and circumstance. Sensual as opposed to sexual, collaborative as opposed to voyeuristic, by turns the photographer elicits affection, boredom, reflection, peace, and laughter in her subjects. “They are my friends, and friends of friends, some very close, that I have shot for 10 years,” she says of her portrait subjects.
“I choose them because I find something intriguing in their character, their attitude; they all have something strong and soft at the same time. There is something very specific that I am fascinated by, and I usually find this in women.”
As for her process Simond prefers to shoot off set and with simple white backgrounds when possible. Says Simond, “The equipment is simple and we, the subject and I, form a trust. This minimal method allows me to get close to my subject. I try to catch the subjects in subtle and intimate moments. Also, being a woman photographing women helps me to capture these intimate images – and that was something I wanted to explore.”
After studying aesthetic and theory of cinema at the University of Lausanne, Simond completed an M.A. in Photography at ECAL, University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her work has been nominated for the Aperture / Paris Photo First Book Award, the Wallpaper Graduate Directory and the British Journal of Photography’s “Ones to Watch” 2018. She is the winner of Swiss Design Awards 2018 and most recently exhibited at the FOAM museum in Amsterdam.
Her debut artist book, entitled Rayon Vert. Published by Kominek in 2018, garnered great critical acclaim and sold out within months. It was re-published within a year.
Born in Geneva, she currently lives and works in Bienne, Switzerland.