Striking Portraits Capture What People Look Like At 7am Vs 7pm
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
This arresting series of portraits is the work of Belgium-born photographer Barbara Iweins. It’s small section of a larger ongoing project called Au Con de ma Rue (my street corner).
From a young age Barbara had a keen fascination for people watching. Seven years ago she decided to spin her curiosity into an art project: “I decided to embrace this obsession and capture some of these people passing with a camera.” She says.
Three hundred portraits later Barbara hungered to capture a deeper intimacy than street photography could deliver. “I wanted to know more. I wanted to enter their intimate thoughts.”
She contacted thirty of her subjects inviting them to participate in Au Con de ma Rue, capturing portraits of them alongside objects they would save if their house were on fire. “I felt it would it give insight into the person, into his passions, his family.” She says.
Next she asked her subjects to pose with friends. “With a friend, after all you are forced to be yourself, show the real person. You can’t pretend or show off. The friend will immediately bring you back to reality.”
7am - 7pm currently sits somewhere in the middle of Au Con de ma Rue’s ongoing journey . Over the years as the project evolved selfies became more commonplace and Barbara felt it was becoming difficult to capture her subjects unaffected. “With the years I realised everyone became more used to posing,” she says. “I don’t want the controlled perfect image.”
7am - 7pm was borne of the desire to shoot her subjects as authentically and honestly as possible, studying their vulnerability first thing in the morning and placing it alongside the version of themselves they present to the world twelve hours later.
Barbara was able to ensure she got the images she wanted by crashing at her subject’s house or inviting them to stay at hers. She soon learned she had to work quickly to capture the look she wanted. “I thought I would have 20 min to shoot the expression of a person waking up but actually no, the uninhibited glaze in the eyes of a person dispears in 5 min,” She says. “I could really see in a matter of seconds that the person was taking his face, his body back in control. The vulnerable human being was gone.”
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
[Photo: barbaraiweins]
Barbara plans to photograph her subjects again in 2019, ten years after the project began.
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