Ellen von Unwerth is a well-known German photographer. During her 30 years long career, there has been a never-ending cavalcade of stars posing in front of her camera for photo sessions like no other. It’s all about having fun and erasing the boundary between fantasy and reality. Like a film director, von Unwerth creates a parallel universe where everything is possible, while always maintaining her professionalism. Since she took her first pictures during a modelling assignment in Africa some more than 30 years ago, she has produced a host of incredible images, nine photo books, an almost incalculable number of magazine’s covers and also various productions in her career as a film director, as well as created her own magazine that is distributed internationally.
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This iconic beauty started out as a model but did not fancy the hard, controlling manner in which the models were treated: “Stand still, don’t move”. So, with a small, simple camera, a present from her boyfriend, she began taking pictures of her model friends and enjoying herself. Before long she was commissioned by fashion designers such as Katharine Hamnett, she shot a major Guess campaign, discovered the then unknown model Claudia Schiffer and was the first to put Kate Moss on the cover of Vogue. She calls herself a feminist and always portrays women as strong and never as wafer-thin depressed victims. And the rest is fashion history.

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The exhibition Devotion! 30 Years of Photographing Women is presented in series reflecting some emotional expressions: love, play, power, gender, lust, passion and drama. Here, your perception of the real world will be jolted. What is up and what is down, what is pleasurably sexy, what looks reprehensible and why do they seem to have so much fun? Whichever of those seven expressions her pictures portray, they are always approached in the lively, energetic, sensual style often with a slight humorous touch significant for Ellen von Unwerth. The exhibition also features films and video clips directed by von Unwerth.

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“Much improves greatly if you play around with it. Don’t take things so seriously. Let life come to you instead of trying to control everything. I want energy and movement in my images, because that’s how life is. You can’t control it. It will always surprise you, if you let it, instead of constantly labelling experiences as either good or bad,” Ellen von Unwerth explains her work.

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“The photographs become like a diary of meetings, people and contexts that suddenly spring to life again. It’s absolutely marvellous and emotional. Exhibiting at Fotografiska makes me incredibly proud. Another thing is that so much of what I did would never be published today, when so many things are considered too provocative. It’s like we’re being transported back in time to when puritanism defined our common reality. I don’t want to go back there and if I can make people reflect on how crazy that would be, it would make me proud,” Ellen von Unwerth concludes with a happy smile.