Laura Kampman — The Art of Self-Portraiture

Everything in art is self-portraiture. Ultimately, everything we do is a reflection of our subconcious — a portrait of ourselves even if it’s an abstraction. Your art will always reveal more about you than about your subject. Your experience of something — not the thing itself — is the true underlying subject of everything you create.

If we look away from abstraction and take the term literally we quickly realise that truly honest self-portraits are incredibly rare. The general approach requires a certain degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to capture the own portrait — in painting even more than in photography. There is an ego-consciousness layer which ultimatley paints itself painting itself. Frida Kahlo would paint self-portraits because, so often alone, she was the person she knew best.

Digitalisation stirred things up regarding self-portraiture and the term ultimately lost it’s meaning. The majority of people are able to do it and have the ressources to do so all the time. The act of objectifying the self is more present than it has ever been, but it’s just so empty these days, because the boundaries shifted. It doesn’t take much to take a selfie, but painting or properly depicting ourselves makes most of us uncomfortable.

WHITELIES sat down with Laura Kampman, a dutch model and photographer, who takes on the topic of self-portraiture in a dramatic and melancholic way on a Rolleicord from the 1920’s.

Stefan Dotter: Laura, you shoot most of your pictures with a Rolleicord, which is surprising since you don’t see so many photographers using cameras from the late 1920’s these days. What attracts you the most to this particular camera?

Laura Kampman: I started loving that camera before I used it because it was a Christmas gift from my lovely boyfriend. It’s the first medium format camera I ever used. Not only the quality and the way it captures light is amazing, but because it’s such an old and beautiful looking camera. People who sit for me tend to have more respect, open up, and give more of themselves. Which is exactly what I strive to capture. Purity.

SD: The scene is set with you mostly in a bedroom, nude, in a rather melancholic dark setting. The compositions remind me of the work of William Merritt Chase. What’s your relation to self-portraiture and autobiography?

LK: There is always an emotional layer behind my self-portraits. For example, my family and I recently moved out of the house where I was raised. When the house was completely empty, I went back to be in all the rooms by myself. I had so many memories of my life there, stuck in my mind. I was emotional and confused. So I decided to take self-portraits to capture that feeling. It’s a way of releasing emotions for me.

SD: Ingmar Bergman pointed out that „self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours tell the truth”. Isn’t all art to some extent self-portraiture?

LK: I think not just art but all we do in life is self-portraiture. The food we eat, the places we travel to, the choices we make, the people we surround ourselves with. Everything we do comes from inside of us, so it’s a reflection of ourselves.

SD: Self-portraiture has changed at the fastest pace possible since the „selfie” was invented. Is your analog approach on the subject a way to rebel against the contemporary development?

LK: Not really, I’ve been taking self-portraits digitally and on film since I was thirteen. It’s just something I’ve always done and now I happened to fall in love with a film camera. Which makes me feel more inspired to take photos of myself with that one instead of a mobile phone.

SD: What is art for?

LK: That’s the question we all ask and I think can only be answered without words.

SD: How has successfully working as a model influenced your photography, was it elevating or limiting?

LK: A bit of both. I have a certain image that I have to promote, so sometimes I feel I can’t be as raw or intense with my pictures as I want to be. Elevating because I learned so much about lighting, camera’s, different expressions and angles of my bodies that work well in a picture. Which I sometimes take advantage of and sometimes decide to do exactly the opposite.

SD: Is there any exhibitions or upcoming projects we can look forward to in 2016?

LK: There is always lots of projects going on inside my mind, if they will become reality in 2016 I don’t know yet. Let’s see.

Photographs by
Laura Kampman

Interview & Words by
Stefan Dotter