Diana Scheunemann

From Photographing Her Mother at Eight to Commercial Work — Keeping the Camera inside the Conversation

Scheunemann was born in Germany in 1975, moved to Switzerland at fifteen, and studied photography in Zurich^*14 Her official biography traces a career based at different times in Zurich, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, and Texas, combining advertising, editorial and celebrity portraiture with personal work^*1 In Aesthetica, Scheunemann identifies a photograph she made of her mother in the bathroom at age eight as an early formative memory and describes her work as “very autobiographical”^*3 The same article describes her method in terms of establishing trust and allowing the camera to become part of conversation and joking with the subject^*3The way she had photographed people close to her continued into advertising and editorial assignments. That continuity became a starting point for connecting commercial work with personal projects.

Ambisexual — Fashion Photography and Private Life after the 1990s

Published in 2001, Ambisexual is a small photobook of Scheunemann’s friends photographed in private spaces and sexual situations, and it provides an early point of reference for her later autobiographical work. In a statement published by Le Plac’Art Photo, she explains that she was already photographing friends, that the situations emerged from real life, and that pictures of people she knew well reflected her own life “like a family album”^*12This approach developed at a moment when fashion photography itself was changing. The V&A describes Corinne Day as moving away in the 1990s from the polished fashion imagery associated with the 1980s and bringing a documentary-inflected proximity to young bodies and everyday settings into magazine pages^*23 The same V&A discussion also notes Nan Goldin’s photographs of friends, lovers, and people from the club scene made from within that social world rather than from the position of an outside observer^*23 A 2006 announcement for a solo exhibition in Bologna likewise records that Scheunemann was working for fashion magazines such as The Face and British ELLE while photographing intimate scenes from private life, and presented those images as departing from advertising stereotypes^*16There is no basis for identifying either photographer as a direct influence on Scheunemann. The comparison establishes the photographic climate around 2001, when Ambisexual appeared: fashion pages and images of private life were already drawing closer together. Scheunemann did not confine her way of photographing friends to personal work; she maintained a similarly close relation to the subject in later fashion photography.

Behind My Face — Replacing the Written Diary with Dated Self-Portraits

Behind My Face is an ongoing self-portrait diary begun in 1999. Using a largely consistent method and dating the images, Scheunemann aims to build a record across the 365 days of a year. On the official Books & Projects page, she explains that because she quickly forgets events and feelings, she photographs herself in place of the written diary she once kept, using the images to remember where she was and how she felt^*2 Les Belles de Nuit likewise presents this long-term project as a central autobiographical body of work developed alongside her commercial photography^*15Because each dated image preserves her face, clothing, room, or location, the self-portrait becomes the unit of record that replaces a written diary.

“Black Days” — Making the Absence of a Photograph Part of the Series

Behind My Face includes “blackouts” or “black days” for days or situations Scheunemann does not want to remember. These days are preserved within the sequence as black frames. Actuphoto describes the self-portrait diary, begun in 1999, as an ongoing activity alongside four monographs and moving-image work^*6 photography-now’s exhibition and publication records also show that her personal work has been presented independently in exhibitions and books^*14By recording an absence as a black day, the photographic diary separates self-disclosure from the obligation to show everything.

Freedom in Flashes — Changing the Distance to the Model while Retaining Fashion’s Staging

Published in 2007, Freedom in Flashes brings together youth, nudity, cars, and summer travel in photographs that mix improvised snapshots with fashion photography. An ArtDaily publication notice describes a project combining youth, freedom, play, and staging^*8 In The Guardian, Scheunemann said she was not interested in fashion photographs in which a subject simply looks beautiful for the camera. She described working with a 50mm lens and flash at a distance that made the time with models feel more like being with childhood friends^*22 Aesthetica reads the series as the construction of an idealized world of youth in which problems recede, not as an unmediated record of reality, and notes Scheunemann’s acknowledgment of that artifice^*3Scheunemann did not reject the staging of fashion photography in favor of photographing only “real life.” She retained staging, flash, and professional models while bringing the photographer-model relationship closer to the proximity of photographing friends. The resulting images cannot be cleanly assigned either to polished commercial imagery or to private snapshots.

Love American Skin — Making a Photobook and an 84-Minute Film from the Same Journey

Love American Skin grew out of an approximately two-month journey across the United States in 2010 and developed into both a photobook and a feature-length documentary film. The official film page describes a project that began in New York and involved photographing and interviewing people across the country, approaching the idea of “America” through individual lives rather than as a single, unified image^*4 Soundtrack materials for the film also document a sixty-day journey through twenty-one states during which people were photographed and recorded^*5The photobook preserves individual people and scenes as still photographs; the film records conversations, voices, movement, and relationships across time. One journey is divided between two media, using the information that still photography can retain and the information that moving images can retain as separate resources.

Photobastei and Hauser Online — Individual Encounters Instead of a Single Story of America

A 2014 presentation at Photobastei described Love American Skin as a project built from individual encounters with roughly sixty people, emphasizing an arrangement of people met during the journey instead of using a single figure to stand for the nation^*7 Le Plac’Art Photo’s record of the photobook confirms that the project was also edited into a physical book alongside the film^*13 Hauser Online likewise presents the project as connecting land and bodies under the title “American skin,” bringing different personal experiences into a single itinerary^*11The roughly sixty participants are not organized as representative examples of a national character. They are arranged within the itinerary according to where and when they were encountered. Both book and film use the individual meeting as their basic unit. At photo14 in 2014, Scheunemann discussed Love American Skin with Erich Gysling, and the project was presented in the public program as her most recent work at the time^*21.

Four Photobooks — Carrying Private Life, Staging, and Travel into Publication

Scheunemann’s personal work has appeared in several photobooks, including Ambisexual, Diana Scheunemann, Freedom in Flashes, and Love American Skin. KALTBLUT describes Love American Skin as her fourth monograph, following the previous three^*9 A Rakuten Books record confirms publication information for the 2013 edition and supports the fact that the project was edited as a physical photobook as well as a film^*10At minimum, the publication history shows that early photographs of friends, self-portraits, staged images of youth, and the cross-country American project have repeatedly been given book form apart from her commercial portfolio. These publications establish a sustained parallel body of personal work organized into separate volumes around friends, self-portraiture, youth culture, and travel across the United States.

YOU BY DIANA — Making Pre-Shoot Consultation Part of Portraiture

In the recent YOU BY DIANA project, Scheunemann applies decades of fashion and portrait experience to sessions for private clients. Her official portfolio presents current work photographing people who are not professional models while continuing to use studio lighting and staging^*17 Her own introduction and blog explicitly describe a pre-shoot discussion about how the sitter wants to be seen, followed by decisions about clothing, pose, and lighting^*18In YOU BY DIANA, consultation before the shoot is built into the production process. Part of the image design normally determined by an editorial team or client in fashion photography is shifted to a conversation with the sitter herself. Scheunemann’s description of YOU BY DIANA states that after more than twenty years in fashion and advertising she wanted to photograph women who were not professional models for those women themselves; this is given as the reason for starting the service^*19She retains the lighting and posing techniques developed through commercial work, while the commissioning client and the photographed subject become the same person—a concrete difference from her earlier advertising assignments.

Friends, Self-Portraits, Models, and Clients — The Relationship with the Subject Comes First

Ambisexual centers on friends, Behind My Face on Scheunemann herself, Freedom in Flashes on professional models, and YOU BY DIANA on clients who are not professional models. Discussing Freedom in Flashes, Scheunemann recalls using a 50mm lens and a small amount of flash and says that working with the models felt “like being with childhood friends”^*22 In YOU BY DIANA, the process is explicitly structured around asking what the sitter wants before the session and then discussing clothing, pose, and lighting^*20The type of subject changes, but Scheunemann repeatedly avoids determining the final image by herself. Conversation with the other person enters decisions before or during the session. In her current work, this method is most explicit as a stated procedure for portraits made with private clients.