Johanna Fateman at The New Yorker:
The young Swiss photographer Senta Simond shoots her subjects in natural light, but it’s the platonic-erotic bonds of close friendship that give them their particular glow. Simond credits the intimate, spontaneous mood of her portraits to her unfussy process: her subjects are women she knows, some of whom have been her models for a decade; she uses minimal equipment, in non-studio settings, and seeks out plain white backgrounds to position her subjects against. It’s familiarity and trust that produce her transfixing images—images that once upon a time might’ve been said to smack of the male gaze. The photos in her U.S. début, at Danziger Gallery (all from 2017–18), are “collaborative as opposed to voyeuristic,” the press release asserts, but this doesn’t quite ring true. They’re portraits of both obsession and self-possession. The exhibition’s fifteen black-and-white prints show women in deep thought and in varied states of undress, their mischievously—or lazily—uninhibited poses made thrilling by Simond’s bold camera angles, cropped compositions, and unmistakable fascination with the bodies before her.
more here.