Sarah Hermans is a photographer primarily working in Belgium. While she doesn't lay out a specific scope for her work, most of her images deal with architecture and the beautiful spaces around her. She primarily shoots with a Pentax 6x7 meaning she scans in everything she works on. Because of this it is hard to speak technically about her work in the same way we can for digital work, but clearly Hermans is intentional. From framing to color choices, everything she includes in the image serves to showcase the best narrative or depiction.
Hermans' work shows a unique type of beauty I've been interested in recently. There are many elements that are classically beautiful, like the texture study in the middle photo, but they also possess a modernity and shift that is not always thought of. In looking at her work there is a clear study of immediate environments and unposed moments. The colors she uses are fairly desaturated, favoring one or two bright moments instead of a hyper saturated image. It's hard to put her work under any type of conceptual theme and it feels unnecessary to do so. Her online presence is very minimal, just a lot of images, so it is hard to really understand what she is trying to do with the work.
As said before, I'm really interested in the beauty of these photos. They may not be totally new or groundbreaking but they have a certain presence I'm continually drawn to. Her images have also encouraged me to think about whether or not beauty is enough, specifically within the photographic context. Sure there will always be a generally positive response to beautiful things, but the medium demands more than that to truly say something important. I love Hermans' images but I'm not sure they move beyond this place of being nice to look at.
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