by Ellen von Unwerth
Cherry Kiss
Artist: Ellen von Unwerth
This black-and-white photograph is a close, cropped study of two figures leaning into one another at what reads as a masked ball or late party, one in a lace eye mask and drop earrings, the other with a braided vintage coiffure, jewellery and dark ribboned detailing catching the light. Von Unwerth works tight and high-contrast, filling the frame with the two heads and the charged, narrow space between them, the background dissolving to shadowed figures and low light. The picture reads as a single intimate moment lifted out of a crowd.
The work is a study in intimacy and masquerade, the masks and jewels lending it the air of a decadent costume drama while the closeness of the two figures makes the viewer an accidental witness. The theme is complicity and concealment, identity half-hidden behind lace, an encounter staged as private theatre in which the subjects are wholly absorbed in each other rather than the camera. Von Unwerth’s signature is exactly this narrative charge, a scene that plays like a still from a film with the drama left deliberately unresolved. The work belongs to her long engagement with sensuality, performance and the private worlds of women, and speaks to collectors drawn to fashion photography’s crossover into fine art. Ellen von Unwerth’s photographs are typically issued as limited editions, each print part of a controlled run.
Size: medium
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