Scheltens & Abbenes

Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes are the sum total of a still-life photographer and the creative craftsmanship of an artist. Technical perfection added to individual handicraft, strong pictorial clarity in addition to tailor-made settings. They experiment with converting spatial dimensions into flat surfaces and explore intensively photography’s potential for creating illusion. Essential to their work is the laboratory process in the studio where they construct their settings with an attitude of conceptualization and solution-led thinking, regardless of whether they are editing or tackling commissioned or independent artistic work.

Instead of presenting objects as plain sellable products, they often manipulate and utilize them as building blocks for new compositions. The autonomous artistic quality of the photograph always has to prevail. Scheltens & Abbenes deliberately choose to operate both in the field of applied and autonomous art and use them as breeding ground for one another. This approach resulted in showing their projects in cultural institutions such as Galliera Musee de la Mode Paris, Foam Amsterdam, Huis Marseille Amsterdam, Asama International Photo Festival Japan and the Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie Mannheim. In 2019 they made a special commission for the Dutch Royal House at Palace Huis ten Bosch.

Scheltens & Abbenes create commissioned photographs for fashion and design companies such as Humanrace by Pharrell Williams, Paco Rabanne, Maison Martin Margiela, COS, Hermes, Frederic Malle, Muller van Severen, Arita, Gucci Osteria, Diptyque and editorials for magazines such as Fantastic Man, The Gentlewomen, Another Man, Double, Pin-Up magazine, MacGuffin, The Plant and T The New York Times Style magazine.

Scheltens & Abbenes won a ICP Infinity Award, in New York.