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Embodied Lines
von • by Laura Zalenga
www.laurazalenga.com

Our editorial team didn’t need any special background information

to become aware of Laura Zalenga. She has long since made her

mark: with around 180,000 followers on Instagram, she is one of

the voices of a new visual language combining photography, space

and staging and thus one of those young photographers who make

a significant contribution to the present-day image perception.

After initial successes in photographic art during her architecture

studies, Zalenga began working as a freelance photo designer in

2014, quickly developing her own unique style – and completing
an internship at AIT during the same period. Her works, mostly

clearly composed self-portraits, always revolve around the subtle

connection between figure and environment, between body and

the built world. The fact that her architecture studies are not just a

biographical footnote but form the basis of her minimalist, precise

aesthetic is impressively demonstrated in the series presented here.

The Rotterdam-based photographic artist travelled to Antwerp to

take the pictures at the Port House, a building designed by Zaha

Hadid for the Flemish Port Authority. A glass structure reminiscent

of a ship, a diamond and water rises above an old fire station.

Organized by Jacob Jonas The Company and Port of Antwerp, the

performance features a choreography, staged by her with dancers

from Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, that sets the architecture in motion:

bodies respond to sharp angles and prismatic surfaces, lines

condense, spaces break open. Zalenga’s experience is evident

not only in independent projects on social issues, but also in

commissioned work for major design brands and companies such as

Sony and Disney – as a sought-after photographer who understands

architecture, the body and emotion not as opposites, but as a unity.