Bénédicte questions people in images (…) the question of fragility, inequality, and ephemerality are an integral part of her photography.
Ever since its invention back in the 19th century, photography has been documenting life. At the same time, it focuses on inviting audiences to a rather subjective world, while trying to be taken seriously as an art form. Photography has always been considered a male-dominated profession, but luckily things are changing. Scholars, writers, bloggers, photography students, and enthusiasts have been giving due to the female pioneers of the field. Most of them were always standing and/or hiding in the shadows, oblivious to how much they could acclaim and accomplish. Arguably, the techniques, concepts, and thematic female photographers use differ from those of male photographers. At a time when most women were convinced that their place was in the kitchen and certainly not in the dark room, some were struggling to surpass their male counterparts and work towards gaining respect and recognition for their work.
Bénédicte Van der Maar (French artist, photographer, and videographer, 1969-) was born in Paris and entered the world of studio photography as an assistant of French photographer Jean-Loup Sieff. An economist by training, Van der Maar started taking portraits of friends, actors and dancers, which were exhibited in the city of Montrouge. She took photographs in New York, Italy, Israel and India. Her photo collection Accumulations was noticed by La Galerie Le Simoun which exhibited her work in Paris in 2007. In 2008, the daily paper France-Soir published one of her photos titled The New Yorker. Fragile, a series of conceptual photography, was shown at the La Nuit de la Photographie Contemporaine exhibition in Paris.
Van der Maar's artistic photographic work initially focused on the representation and status of women in France, then - from 2007 onwards, during a trip to India - she started developing her long-term personal projects centred on social issues. In 2010 Bénédicte's work was shown at a French contemporary art auction by art expert Pierre Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Subsequently, she travelled to Haiti to photograph the daily battles at the Haitian commune of Sun City. Les Enfants du Cholera was the result of that trip and it was broadcast by Doctors Without Borders. In 2011, Van der Maar travelled to the jungle of Nepal and later published her photo essay in the weekly news magazine Paris Match. Bénédicte is influenced by humanist and contemporary photography. Van der Maar visited Kazakhstan, Syria, Tunisia, the Himalayas, Pakistan, Colombia, and the Middle East, all the time aiming to highlight people's challenging lives, commitments and environment.
The artist focuses on fragility, in human topics. In her portraits, she also exposes discrimination, like the exploitation and slavery of women and children. Her work has been present in solo and group exhibitions since 2005. Whether Van der Maar works in the studio or at the end of the world, her work exams inequality, the ephemeral, and the sensitive questions that contemporary societies are acutely confronted with.
In her photography she occupies herself with the human being [sic] in the different regions of the world. With her works Bénédicte Van der Maar is a strong position in the new contemporary figurative and social French photography.
We will continue talking about female names that left their mark on photography and about contemporary female photographers who are still to emerge. There are a lot of female photographers out there deserving of praise and we can only hope to cover as many of them as we can. Please follow this space to find out more.
