Fine Art nominee

Isabelle van Zeijl most recent works explore the magical beauty that dominates the twenty-first century, blended with historical views of beauty. As a young girl she grew up amongst strong influences from Art and Fashion. She was fascinated by the models in glossy magazines with their smooth skin and desirable looks, as if they did not exist in a real world, but somewhere in a supernatural world. The Supermodels of the 1980s and 1990s were dressed up, wearing big hair and make up in accordance with the canons of fashion. At the same time Isabelle van Zeijl looked for hours at the magical women in the paintings of Botticelli, Da Vinci and Fontainebleau. Fascinated by the strength and simultaneous vulnerability of these female icons of the past, Isabelle van Zeijl blends these role models of beauty and transforms them to define a contemporary way of seeing beauty with a strong sense of the past.
In her practice Isabelle van Zeijl observes her subject, until she reaches the domain of the soul of the portrayed. At this level there is only one witness, one being. Her unique style of photography is about capturing that true moment, the soul revealed to you.

Fascinated by the art of the past and different perspectives on beauty through the ages, Fine Art Photographer Isabelle van Zeijl explores the aesthetics and technics of the past to re-invent a contemporary art work in her practice. Boundaries fade as she blends techniques and idiom of the old masters with present-day aesthetics to create striking portraits. By evoking both alienation and recognition, while addressing our collective memory, her photographs seduce the audience.
By framing her own appearance within the broader context of the classical canon Van Zeijl explores beauty. Digitally composing her photographs like a painter by using techniques of the past, her work never compromises on authenticity. Even though she is both creator, object and subject, her fine art photography reaches beyond the genre of self-portraiture, creating a universal woman and a vision of female aesthetics over time. With each portrait Isabelle gets closer to both her personal truth and an all-embracing meaning of beauty that transcends time and age.
Van Zeijl has shown work continuously and internationally over the past ten years, represented by galleries located in The UK, The Netherlands, and New York and exhibiting at emerging and established international art fairs in New York, Miami.