Striking Portraits Capture What People Look Like at 7 a.m. vs. 7 p.m.
This arresting series of portraits is the work of Barbara Iweins, a Belgian photographer. It’s a small section of a larger, ongoing project called Au Coin de Ma Rue (My Street Corner).
From a young age, Iweins had a keen fascination with people-watching. Seven years ago, she decided to spin her curiosity into an art project: “I decided to embrace this obsession and capture some of these people passing with a camera,” she told Yahoo Beauty.
Three hundred portraits later, Barbara hungered to capture a deeper appreciation of her subjects than she could find in street photography. “I wanted to know more. I wanted to enter their intimate thoughts.”
She invited 30 people to take part in the project, picturing them alongside objects they would save if their house were on fire. “I felt it would it give insight into the person, into his passions, his family,“ she explained.
Next, she asked her subjects to pose with friends. “With a friend, after all, you are forced to be yourself, show the real person. You can’t pretend or show off. The friend will immediately bring you back to reality.”
7 a.m.-7 p.m. grew out of a desire to shoot her subjects as authentically and honestly as possible, studying their vulnerability first thing in the morning and juxtaposing it with the version of themselves they present to the world 12 hours later.
Iweins was able to make sure that she got the images she wanted by spending time at her subjects’ house or inviting them to stay at hers. She soon learned she had to work quickly to capture the look she wanted. “I thought I would have 20 minutes to shoot the expression of a person waking up, but actually, no, the uninhibited glaze in the eyes of a person disappears in five minutes,” she says. “I could really see in a matter of seconds that the person was taking his face, his body back in control. The vulnerable human being was gone.”
All photos courtesy of Barbara Iweins.
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