biography

eddie brannan, creative director - the FADER - 02/2002
http://www.thefader.com

There's a deceptive simplicity to Anne Senstad's photography. She is a portraitist, and her images, muted in color, quiet in tone, initially seem to lack the bravura splash of certain of her contemporaries' work. But a few extra moments' contemplation makes one realize that Senstad's images are not lacking in anything, and that their power is the more forceful for not being immediate. The narrative inherent to her work reveals itself slowly, a gentle flowering of meaning and depth, and one's eye tends to linger on her images, savoring the minutiae, the infinite subtlety of what she has captured of her subjects. Her work is always sublime, always beautiful, yet she manages to expose far more of the inner workings of her subjects' psyches than perhaps they realize. I love her photography, yet should she offer to shoot me, I would not be sure whether to be pleased or terrified.

anne katrine senstad is a young artist from oslo who specializes in the tried-and-tested style of photography called portraiture. as a norwegian in new york, and a female practitioner at that, she has come up against cultural and gender barriers which would have dissuaded less determined artists to abandon an artform which is known to be particularly harsh on up-and-comers. still, senstad, who studied photography at parsons school of design in manhattan, did manage to keep her ideals intact and her photography now appears regularly in magazines such as wired, detour,trace and the new york times magazine.

her most celebrated work, which was isolated as the centerpiece of a growing body of work by norwegian television when they profiled her recently for a special half hour documentary, would have to be the covers she shot for the avantgarde magazine architecture. those covers, the most famous of which is a close-up of a hand holding a baseball, are considered by the art director of the magazine to be ground breaking because they incite debate as to the true nature - and purpose - of magazine photography, especially when they venture away from traditional formats and draw on clear art references which may initially be lost on the magazine's readership.

this goes a long way toward explaining senstad's rather unusual creative process, because the subject matter is always studied as it refers to a wider conceptual context. the subject is directed for angle,light and expression with stunning precision, often in her home studio,and, once the different components fall into place, the shutterbug goes off and images roll out almost immediately. the shooting process could be over in as little as three minutes, and this seems to throw some subjects or catch them off guard.

like one of her early inspirations, german photographer august sander, the simplicity in the composition should never mask the referential background which comes from years of careful studies, not just of photography, but the masters of past centuries as well.

Of course, the worlds of cinema and fashion feed senstad's imagery as well, but the new challenge for a forward thinking artist like senstad is the approach she will take for the leap into the digital age.that process may reveal another transformation,but the truth is senstad's instinctive approach to photography will never change, no matter what the format she chooses for her grandest statements.

fashion net news - wednesday, june 21, 2000 http://www.fashion.net detour tops thirteen years with class thirteen years is a long time in any business, let alone in the publishing world. which is why our hats go off to juan morales - the brown-eyed editorial maestro behind detour magazine, whose 13th anniversary issue recently grabbed our attention as we passed by the newsstands - if not for the clear-cut, focussed image of the back of sean penn's head on the cover, then for a diverse assortment of editorial attributes. "first impressions", colleen brennan's profile on designer alice roi, who has long been awaiting acclaim, certainly impressed us. we also admired evan wiener's interview with harvey keitel, which was well written and concise. what really did the deed, however, was "Space" - a celebrity venture featuring a brilliant composition of kyle maclachlan captured by anne katrine senstad http://www.fashion.net