BASTIAAN WOUDT
Bastiaan Woudt (born 1987, Alkmaar, Netherlands) is a Dutch photographer and entrepreneur whose rapid emergence as one of the most significant voices in contemporary fine art photography has been built on a practice of exceptional formal rigour and quiet visual authority. Largely self-taught, Woudt took up photography in 2011, replacing formal training with an immersive study of photobooks and museums and an intensive engagement with the work of the masters of the medium, in particular Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Man Ray, and Bill Brandt. Working predominantly in monochrome, he creates portraits, landscapes, and still lifes that bring a contemporary sensibility to bear on a classical tradition, producing images of striking tonal depth and emotional stillness that feel simultaneously rooted in photographic history and entirely of the present.
Within five years of beginning his practice, Woudt had been named one of the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch (2016), received the Van Vlissingen Art Foundation Grant (2017), and been longlisted for the Prix Pictet (2019). His work has been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Numéro, and National Geographic, and he has published seven monographs.