A Naughty Fairytale | Ellen von Unwerth

She began her career as a model but since she snapped her first photograph Ellen von Unwerth has enthralled the fashion and pop industries. Her explosive, sexually charged imagery is a playful exploration of femininity and female power. Known for her ability to capture seductive fashion narratives, von Unwerth has spent two decades featuring her work in entertainment magazines across the globe. The German photographer is a multi-talented pioneer with director and film-maker etched into her impressive resume, and her work is an evocative diffusion of her vision of sexy as she mixes haute couture fashion with lascivious photo-stories.

A Naughty Fairytale highlights the seductive appeal of von Unwerth’s work, as well as her ability to use her lens as a fictional narrator of her imagery. The series is set against the backdrop of the Victorian Era where prudent correctness and proper etiquette was a societal necessity. von Unwerth ruptures this mood by unleashing a voyeuristic visual into the intimate fairytale of a naughty princess. The innovative photographer created the piece with the help of models Dioni Tabbers, Julia Oleynik and Alice Aufray. von Unwerth has previously worked for magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Harper’s Bazaar. The famed visionary has also collaborated with artists like Duran Duran, Rihanna, All Saints and Janet Jackson to produce album covers for their work. Speaking on A Naughty Fairytale von Unwerth said:

I always love my own photography to tell a little story. When it looks like there’s something happening before and after. And my big influence is Jacques Henri Lartique– he’s a French photographer from the twenties. It was more reportage style, like photographs of elegant women wearing these amazing clothes with their funny dogs with lots of movement, and they’re very, very charming pictures