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‘Hyper-realistic portraits'
The photographers Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm enjoy worldwide renown for their hyper-aesthetic ultra-aesthetic fashion, portrait and still life photography. The Groninger Museum, where the duo was honoured with a retrospective in 2006, described their style as ‘staged artificiality'. Anyone and everyone can be a ‘model' for Blommers & Schumm. The photography duo (both born in 1969) excel in crystal-clear portraits of ‘normal' people and models.
They often photograph their subjects against austere backdrops and in locations such as living rooms and bedrooms. In their meticulously styled studio-based work, there are sometimes cables or photographic equipment simply scattered around.
The ‘Class of '98' series, in which they portrayed young, promising models against a blue background, is renowned: the models have bizarre coiffures, yet their eyes betray a hint of insecurity. In 2006, the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht commissioned the duo to portray high-ranking religious dignitaries.
Work by Blommers & Schumm has featured regularly in international publications such as Re-Magazine, i-D, Visionaire, Flash Art, The New York Times and Fantastic Man. The book Anita and 124 other portraits by Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm, an overview with portraits of the actress Chloé Sevigny, girlfriends, mothers and potatoes, was published in 2006.
Schumm and Blommers have been working together since graduating from the Rietveld Academy in 1996. In 1998 they won the Best Young Fashion Photography Award at the Festival International des Arts de la Mode in Hyères, France.