Elspeth Diederix
Sunset

Elspeth Diederix (b. 1971, Nairobi, Kenya) creates photographic images that inspire the viewer to look at everyday things anew. Sunset, produced two years after her graduation from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, is an example of this.

At first sight, her works appear to be spontaneous snapshots, or perhaps the result of digital manipulation, but they are in fact the outcome of extensive visual research. There is no image manipulation involved, although they are the result of a careful process of trial and error. The subject or title reveals something of where the photograph was taken.

In Sunset – a photograph of the sun going down over the sea – there is a figure positioned precisely in the middle of the frame, their head blocking the disc of the sun, so that the figure radiates power and mystery. The back-light from the sunset throws the figure into shadow, facial expression is absent, only the lines of the t-shirt and shorts can be seen.

Despite the recognisable scene visible in the background – a parked scooter, two women rummaging around in the sand, a group of people sitting on the ground – this commonplace beach scene takes on almost mythic proportions through the precise, symmetrical composition, combined with the simple intervention of replacing the sun with the person’s head.

More recently Diederix has turned her camera chiefly on the plant and animal kingdoms, and for several years now she has kept up a blog on Instagram of the flower garden which she herself designed in Amsterdam’s Erasmus Park, and which, with the aid of volunteers, she continues to maintain as an art project.