PHOTO: Blommers & Schumm-Mid Air
Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm, better known as Blommers & Schumm, are amongst the most established photographers in the international fashion world. They first started making photographs together after graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1997. Since then, the pair have worked for countless editorial publications.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Foam Archive
The exhibition “Mid-Air” offers an intimate and revealing look into the dual vision behind one of today’s most quietly radical artist duos. It unravels the intricate thought processes and meticulous craftsmanship that define their collaboration, exposing the delicate interplay between intuition, experimentation, and control. Moving effortlessly between fashion, art, and visual inquiry, their photographs defy categorization — occupying a space where beauty and strangeness coexist in perfect equilibrium. Rejecting the conventions of commercial imagery, Blommers & Schumm favour an instinctive, personal approach. They often turn away from celebrity and traditional models, instead creating portraits that feel disarmingly human, at times even uncanny. The result is a body of work that both disorients and delights — offering glimpses into a world that feels at once familiar and otherworldly. Bringing together key works from their acclaimed career, “Mid-Air” revisits the duo’s most iconic images, many of which have graced the pages of Fantastic Man, The Gentlewoman, Dazed & Confused, Self Service, Purple, AnOther Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine.With roots in still life photography, Blommers & Schumm have cultivated a heightened sensitivity to form and composition that continues to shape their contemporary practice. Their images often blur the line between subject and object — a model becomes a sculptural element; an inanimate thing appears charged with presence. Through these subtle inversions, they question the established codes of fashion photography, carving out a visual territory that is distinctly their own: conceptual yet sensuous, precise yet playfully off-balance. Perspective, proportion, and perception are their materials. In every image, something hovers just beyond expectation — a beautiful, deliberate surprise that rewards close looking. Over time, Blommers & Schumm have developed a singular visual language: one that is at once conceptually rich and visually arresting. By dismantling the boundaries between the staged and the spontaneous, they invite viewers to reconsider what they see — and how they see it. In an era dominated by digital manipulation, their practice remains resolutely analogue, constructing all illusions in front of the lens. What at first glance may seem familiar — a still life, a portrait, a gesture — reveals, on closer inspection, an impossible moment held in perfect suspension: a glass mid-fall, a figure defying gravity, a face assembled from everyday detritus. These images exist in a fragile balance, as though a single breath could undo them. And yet they endure — suspended in that one impossible instant, caught “mid-air”.
Photo © & Courtesy Blommers & Schumm
Info: Foam, Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Duration: 20/9/2025-23/2/2026, Days & Hours: Mon-Wed & Sat-Sun 10:00-18:00, Thu-Fri 10:00-21:00, www.foam.org/
