Monday, April 6, 2009

Monday Entry: Popel Coumou

































Coumou is a photographer from the Netherlands who specializes in miniature interior environments.  According to New Photographers 2007, Coumou “constructs and captures two-dimensional interior environments in miniature.” Light, color, and space all play important roles in her work.  I really identify with her work because of the clean lines she maintains and her careful and controlled use of color.  However, her work is also quite different than mine in the way she uses light, which tends to add dimension and texture in her imagery. Coumou has had numerous exhibitions won many awards, so far all of which are European.  She attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2004 for photography.  Not a lot of information was available on her, mostly articles in Dutch.  On the website Platform 21 they discuss Coumou’s process of creating images: “In the spaces Popel photographs, people are almost always absent. Her images are thus not narrative ones: only the division of the room, colour and the play of light create the hushed atmosphere.  She later builds 3D models of the rooms, using stark effects of light and shadow, and photographes them again. Sometimes she builds imagined or ‘virtualised’ miniature rooms of clay, paper and textile. She then photographs these as if the buildings can actually be entered.”

Artist website:

 http://www.popelcoumou.nl/work.php

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