CGD

"The client really had confidence in us and gave us a blank check, which is very rare among big commercial clients." Bet Orten

Photographer Bet Orten says that her aim recently has been to deviate from traditional fashion photography by having fashion take a backseat in her work. She takes another daring step in her photographs of lighting objects from the Solitaires collection made by Preciosa Lighting and designed by leading Czech designers. While enhancing the shape of Klára Šumová's Unité chandelier with a group of models veiled in large colourful drapery, she concentrates on light in her other photos - shifting an improvised lit wooden interior in an electrifying landscape close to Kamenický Šenov from one place to another as a way of confronting natural and artificial light. Beams from the light designed by Jakub Berdych intersect with the shadows of trees in the surrounding forest; Souls lights by Eva Eisler "leak" from smouldering logs and pure geometric shapes emerge from the morning mist. In all her photos, Bet Orten succeeds in showing her exceptional feel for sensitive stage design and allows the spectator to see these lights in unexpected contexts. This is perhaps best seen in her production photos where she keeps distance from her installation, depicting a doll's house in a foreboding deep forest or at the columnar rocks of Panská skála.

Karel Císař

"Both projects for Fashionbook.cz arose from the pure need to create and convey things that are important for us."

Bet Orten documented the joint tour of the Elpida choir and indie band Please The Trees in the Grand Chick series. The grandeur of elderly ladies in the typical atmosphere of rock concerts. Fashion photography became a political act, a demonstration in the series made to save the Kyselka spa. "If only one had the power to change things through his other work," says Orten, who studied at London College of Fashion and University of The Arts London and worked as an assistant for Steven Klein. She focuses on fashion photography and portraits which can be found in a range of magazines worldwide. However, it does not matter what she takes photographs of. She depicts her life, our reality through a very distinctive perspective.