To accompany my solo exhibition at Jaeger Art Berlin, a catalogue has been published in a limited edition of 500 copies. This publication offers a closer look at the works featured in the exhibition and reflects on my approach to photography.
Matthias Harder, Director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, has written the introduction, providing his perspective on my work and how it fits into the broader context of contemporary photography. His text offers a thoughtful interpretation of the influences and techniques behind my minimalistic style.
Maximum Minimalism
Ten years ago, Bastiaan Woudt’s slightly blurred portrait of a young man named Carlos marked a pivotal moment in the Dutch photographer’s career, propelling him to international acclaim. His distinctive portraits now grace major private and public collections, with representation by galleries around the world.
Woudt’s artistic journey has taken him to the mountains of Nepal, where he captured desolate, snow-covered vistas and the inhabitants against neutral backgrounds. Like much of his work, these earlier images evoke a profound sense of timelessness. This quality is also evident in his 2017 project Mukono, created during a visit to Uganda. In this series, we encounter a compelling juxtaposition of landscapes, still lifes, and intimate portraits of the local people in a balanced interplay of close-ups, profiles, and back views. Through these images, Woudt pioneers a new approach to photographic representation, offering a humanistic perspective that transcends the problematic ethnological portraits from similar locations over a century ago. Regardless of the subject matter, his style blends documentary and artistic elements, creating images that are poetic and enigmatic. His photographs bring us closer to the people and their inner lives while conveying the reality of their existence with remarkable visual impact.
Woudt works across distant locations but also at his studio in Alkmaar, Netherlands, exploring diverse projects and artistic approaches in parallel. Staged with maximum minimalism in the empty studio, his fashion-oriented portraits captivate and challenge the viewer, evoking an emotional intensity rarely achieved in photography. Central to Woudt’s aesthetic is his exclusive use of high-contrast black and white, employing a distinctive chiaroscuro technique. Human figures are often accentuated by bold geometric forms, such as oversized circular hats or sculpturally draped skirts. Although faces are often obscured, the heads are frequently crowned by eccentric hats or headpieces. While some are crafted by a Dutch designer, most are invented by Woudt’s team – including simple constructions like stacked bowls – serving as intriguing extensions of the body.
Woudt’s stylistic approach surpasses even Helmut Newton in its use of exaggeration, featuring extreme bodily contortions, strategic blurring, and facial concealment with long hair or fabric, which then becomes the main focus of the picture. His repertoire also includes nuanced, near-monochromatic staging with light or dark tone-on-tone compositions as well as close-up studies of body details that challenge conventional representational norms. When female subjects engage with the camera directly, their gaze is strikingly intense. In other instances, a woman sits or reclines naked on the hard studio floor, her back exposed, offering a modern, refined reinterpretation of the art-historical topos of the odalisque. Throughout his portfolio, physicality is intrinsically linked to sensuality, ranging from delicate to intense, without ever veering into the suggestive or vulgar. Nudity is presented as natural and uncontrived. Men also feature in his visual universe, depicted with the same sensuality and grace as his female subjects.
Woudt cites renowned photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon as key sources of inspiration; parallels to Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts are also discernable in his work. Yet, Woudt’s oeuvre remains distinctly original – a visualization of timeless beauty and design. His fascinating images simultaneously embody and transcend the contemporary zeitgeist, achieving an enduring quality. The human form and fashion are central to his artistic inquiry, evident in both personal projects and commercial work, including editorial assignments for magazines and commissions for brands such as Chanel.
The debut of two AI-generated works is a noteworthy highlight of this exhibition. These unique pieces were printed using an analogue technique on Japanese washi paper and represent a bold departure from Woudt’s previous creative practice. His process involves creating digitally enhanced photographs based on initial sketches and then modifying them using algorithmic prompts, ultimately selecting two outcomes from this innovative and complex image production methodology. This experimental approach is unparalleled, positioning him at the forefront of innovation in contemporary artistic photography.
Matthias Harder
