Self Portrait
Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen
With this series Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen brings her camera and fisheye lens around the world to take self-portraits in the surrounding landscape. Emerged in the natural surroundings she plays with the idea of becoming one with nature, thus allowing her own body to become part of the pre-existing landscape.
The round shape of the fisheye lens reminds her of Earth's shape and creates an interesting planet-like effect in each landscape.
Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen (b. 1994) is an autodidact photographer and film director born in Odense, Denmark. Ebbesen is interested in the intersection between science and art. Formally educated as a medical doctor, her artworks are small science experiments on how the human body, psyche, and world in general can be visualized and interpreted, depending on the mind and eyes of the beholder.
Ebbesen works with reflections to create surreal effects in her work: "In my work, I aim to play with the sense of reality that we relate to the photograph by distorting the objects and space within the picture frame. With these effects, I aim to surprise and confuse and leave one with the question of what is real." Conceptually her works often deal with identity and the subconscious self affected by and interrelated with the surrounding world.
Feminine Development
Feminine Development is a series that talks about the alienation of the female body and female sexual identity, which has often been distorted and alienated by society: With cosmetic surgery and genetic manipulation anything becomes possible in the strive of fulfilling society’s expectations of beauty and perfectness. Using the mirrors to manipulate the body serves to illustrate how we slowly move away from reality merging with a surreal, parallel world where it is questionable what a natural body looks like. Creating the series, Henriette Sabroe Ebbesen also confronted her own body insecurities by creating images that would celebrate the female body for its capability of giving birth and creating a child starting from the division of just two cells.