Girl With Marbles

About the Photographer

Lux, Loretta

German, b. 1969

Trained as a painter, Loretta Lux began photographing in 1999. Her portraits are carefully controlled at every stage of production, from the formality of the poses she selects to the narrow pastel palette of the final prints. Often the children of friends, her subjects are distinguished by their vintage outfits—including some of Lux's own childhood clothing—and digitally adjusted features. Elongated limbs, oversized heads, and eyes spaced just a little farther apart than average contribute to the strange mystique found in their cool gazes and isolated locations. Digital manipulation is also employed to merge the subjects with their settings: backgrounds either painted by Lux or taken from her photographs of various European landscapes and interiors. The resolved scenes are produced as luminous Ilfochrome prints that, much like the images, enjoy the slick sensuality of processed goods.

Loretta Lux was born in 1969 in Dresden, Germany. She studied painting at Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich from 1990 to 1996. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; Hague Museum of Photography, The Hague; and Torch Gallery, Amsterdam. Her photographs have also been featured in exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; Art Institute of Chicago; and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in its 2006 exhibition In Sight. She is the recipient of a Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis (2002) and The International Centre of Photography's Infinity Award for Art (2005).