Stella Gommans (b. 1971) grew up in a small town in the province of Limburg, that she traded over 30 years ago for Amsterdam, where she initially pursued her dream at the Ballet Academy. Life took another turn, which brought her to the stage of Presenter on the small screen, where the love and fascination for image and light in the broadest sense of the word was born.
With cameramen as her teachers, the work of this largely self-taught photographer typifies itself as poetic and elegant, in which nature often plays the leading role. Nature being a direct reflection of our being on many levels.
Taking inspiration from the mastery of Dutch Golden Age painters and by blending this with 20th century photographers and their use of light, Stella Gommans’ resulting work is poetic, aesthetic, elegant and minimalistic. For Gommans – a former dancer and a largely self-taught photographer, nature in its broadest sense is an unfailing source of inspiration.
This exquisite body of work celebrates flowers - capturing their different phases and the variety of shapes and colours - each telling their own story. In beautiful detail she depicts how the light emphasises the elegance of the stem, or how it catches the leaf, or how it allows us to catch a glimpse of the brittle petals and the burst of colours when in full bloom. Gommans invites the viewer to look closer and sometimes even take a step back, because in that instant – hidden aspects emerge - like a choreography, a fabulous dance.
