Vee Speers is an Australian artist based in Paris known for her dramatic portraits. She has had international exhibitions and publications since the 1990s. Her work includes five series that explore themes of fantasy versus reality and childhood versus adulthood. They often feature intense portraits of individuals to provoke emotional responses in viewers. Her most famous series is "Bordello", praised by Karl Lagerfeld for its dreamlike and sometimes disturbing quality.

1. Vee Speers
A Presentation by Hatty Horscroft

2. About Vee Speers
Vee Speers, an Australian artist, has lived and worked in Paris since 1990. Speers studied fine art and
photography at the QCA in Brisbane before working as a Stills Photographer at the ABC Television in Sydney
in the 80′s. After moving to Paris she began exhibiting her series ‘Bordello’ , followed by The Birthday
Party, Immortal and Thirteen, engaging viewers with the dramatic tension of her portraits and her unique
pallet of colour.
Speers has exhibited in London, Paris, Miami, NYC, Atlanta, China, Ireland, Singapore, Japan, Italy, Tunisia,
Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Sweden, Norway and the United States, and her work has been published on the
covers of Fotomagazin Germany, Zoom, Public Art, Photo International, Images Magazine, A Conceptual
Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, The Sunday Times UK, Russian Photo and Video, Swedish
Photo with features in Zoom, Art Investor, Germany, Shots UK, Photo District News NYC, Photographica
Tokyo, EYEMAZING, American Black + White, Milk, Fotomagazin, Chinese Photography, Bloom, Arte Al
Limite, etc.
Speers’ book ‘Bordello’ with a foreword by Karl Lagerfeld is available world-wide, and her second book
‘The Birthday Party’ was released in October 2008 by Dewi Lewis, UK.

3. What
Vee
Speers
Looks
Like

4. Vee Speers Quotes
On Vee Speers’ website,
this is on her front page:
“ I don’t like to follow the crowd.
I like to seduce, with images that are at once disturbing and beautiful,
but leaving a space for the viewer to enter my world.
My portraits combine elements which evoke conflicting
emotions that can surprise the viewer, telling a story that is somewhere
between fantasy and reality, the obvious and the unexpected. “

5. Vee Speers’ Work
Vee has produced five different series of
photos throughout her career. These five
are:

6. #1 - Bordello
Karl Lagerfeld’s ideas on Bordello:
The twighlight of Vee Speers’
great photos of beautiful women
causes the viewer to merge with
the surroundings of the image and
enter a kind of dream-like vision
of an often sordid reality. Shapes
lose definition and imagination
overweighs perception. Real life is
left behind… the boundaries
between subject and
photographer become more and
more indistinct.
She shows beauty where beauty
can be terribly absent.

7. #2 - Parisians
Ideas on Parisians:
One senses the photographer’s keen eye for detail
and symbolism as her subjects perform dramatically
for the viewer, or pose against a backdrop, Speers’
dramatic set-ups are reminiscent of the early touring
circus shows where peering voyeuristically into
another world touched on all the senses. Speers met
and photographed all her subjects in Paris.
‘Paris is one of those cities where people can express
themselves as they like, and no-one bats an eye-lid.
It’s easy to be inspired here.’

8. #3 - The Birthday Party
Ideas on The Birthday Party by Laura Noble, Eyemazing:
The immediacy of Vee Speers’ imagery is overwhelming. Faces look directly at
the viewer creating a quietly dramatic tension urging a reaction from the
viewer. Speers earlier work in a series entitled ‘Bordello’ constructed
elaborate filmic interiors of fantasy. Her new series, ‘The Birthday Party’ still
presents us with a façade of fantasy but with a pared down aesthetic that
amplifies the visual intensity through its simplicity. These portraits of children
confront us with reminders of our own childhood, whereby a homemade
costume can transform you into a superhero, princess, cowboy or soldier,
poised for adventures and hours of fun and excitement. The escapes that these
worlds of play can provide disclose the underlying realities of the modern
world, wrought with conflict and violence. Child psychologists use observation
of play to decipher underlying traumas and issues that a child may be
experiencing. Looking at these photographs, Speers strikes a chord within us to
trigger our own concerns in relation to today’s paranoid society. The emotive
responses to her work divulge more about the viewer than the viewed.

9. #4 - Immortal
Ideas on Immortal by Jim Casper:
Vee Speers’ photo-based art, Immortal, is at once alluring and
disquieting with beautiful youths set against backdrops of
Eden-like natural beauty, or scenes of post-apocalyptic
destruction. These Immortals are real people, young and
beautiful, but they seem isolated, exposed and vulnerable,
trapped, distant, on guard, defiant, and confronted by echoes
of subliminal fears and insecurities.
With the smooth gloss sheen of fashion-model perfection
Speers has created a new world that merges Mona Lisa charm
and mystery, with the melancholy of Dorian Gray. The surface
is loaded with reference both to classical art, and to the
airbrushed Photoshop perfection of youthful beauty that has
become the everyday obsession of western culture.
These Immortals are all like tragic fallen angels, eyes opened
with animal intelligence, looking out onto an uncertain future,
not even aware of how perfectly beautiful they appear to be
right now.

10. #5 - Thirteen
Ideas on Thirteen by Vee Speers:
During my daughter’s thirteenth year, I
photographed her as her childhood was
eclipsed by growing pains and a desire for
independence. The transition was
unexpectedly fast, almost like observing the
opening of a flower on fast forward. After
capturing the last days of childhood in The
Birthday Party, I have visually linked
Thirteen by photographing only my daughter
as the muse, against the same grey wall. It
is, however, clearly a different story – one
that explores the transformation from child
to young woman, and new found freedom.

11. The End
Sources:
http://www.veespeers.com/