Ellen Von Unwerth's 'Ladyland' London Exhibit Inspires A Decade Of Her Archives At AOC

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Photographer Ellen Von Unwerth has not veered ever away from her style of capturing multidimensional women through a lens of unbridled sexuality, sensuality and freshness. EVY's women are free spirits today, just as Claudia Schiffer revealed in her landmark 1990 Guess campaign. 

EVU's understanding of women is on display as part of her first London retrospective, 'Ladyland', on view at the Opera Gallery. 

Having been a model herself, von Unwerth was fed up, not so much with the proverbial male gaze, but with her own lack of creative freedom and self-expression. 

“I’ve always loved to portray women who are strong, who are playful, who are self-assured, and who really own their sexuality, which is why I love working with Claudia, and Naomi, and all those girls,” she explains. “But then something I always come back to is fragility. I look for that in the women I shoot, too. I don’t want to objectify women, or cast them only in this ‘sexy’ light. I want to see every side of them. There are so many sides to women. That’s why some of my best shots come when the girls think the camera has stopped rolling, you’re seeing something different to what they give you when they know they're being watched, a vulnerability.”