Photography spotlight: Simon Nagel

Simon Nagel, a Paris-based fashion photographer from Germany, was born in a small town near Munich, from here at 20 years-old lives and works in France predominantly working in analog photography, shooting for both editorial and lookbooks. His work has been featured across a number of high profile publications, including books for German publishing house Rohr Verlag, as well as Vogue and ELLE Ukraine. Caption PR has recently been appointed to represent the Paris-based fashion photographer.

Analog photography, a process that uses a progressively changing recording medium such as using a camera and film, would result in numerous clicks of the camera, and light would interact with the chemicals in the image recorded. The collected images, subjected to photographic processing, would result in a creating more realistic and vibrant photography. This type of photography has become popular with those interested in traditional photographic practices. Urban Outfitters, for example, has picked up on this trend and now offers more than sixty product combinations relating to film-based cameras. The resultant image from the process creates warmer colours, dramatic saturation and film grain adding more character to the livened outcome.

Nagel’s collection of images is characterised by the choice in creating them, as dreamy in substance and modern in design. His monochrome photos sharpen the emblazoned and focalised clothing, as well as adding the soft touch of nostalgia. Models are placed in the large focus of the image with mysterious and at times haunting expressions, strong in emotion that emphasises the raw anonymity of the images.

Nagel’s snapshots of the backgrounds of empty nature and sports ground also, however, capture that melancholy yet poignant nature of the models shots that have an enigmatic effect. The effect, overall, of the emotions implicated in the images provide a real focus stripping away all that is unnecessary in the shots. The simplicity of the images sharpens the objects, leaving the fashionable clothing as embellished in its modernity captured with all attention on it.

Yasmin Mahdy

Simon Nagel’s portfolio can be viewed on his website here.