Margriet Smulders

Smulders is best known for her self-portraits and photographs of her family. Her constructed portraits of domestic life were included in the exhibition Who's looking at the Family? at the Barbican Art Gallery, London in 1994. Like Sally Mann, she used her own family in this series. She specializes in portrait photography, mostly portraying family portraits and working people proud in their work and their relationships. She currently lives and works in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her works show influences of Dutch Golden Age painting in their composition, use of light and color, and rendering of textures and surfaces.

To achieve her photographic effects, she utilizes film rather than digital photography. Most of her works are titled mythological figures or dedicated to inspirational painters, enhancing the effect of alienation, while retaining a strong element of eroticism.

Since 1999 when she saw an exhibition on voluptuous Dutch floral still-lives of the seventeenth century at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam she has worked on an ongoing series of floral still life photographs. Her photographs of flowers are highly ambivalent. Inspired by the classical arrangements of the seventeenth century still lifes Smulders arranges theaters of flowers on big mirrors, using silk and inks which comment on beauty and decay. The flowers float and appear to be on the edge of disintegration.

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