Because of her background as a makeup artist, she has what she describes to me as a “big force (presuming she means need) to be with the person that I am shooting, before the shoot”.
And that means of course “that I do the hair and makeup first. And then I get into a dialogue with the person, and here I have the chance to make that person more relaxed and comfortable in front of the camera with me. Which is a very important thing for me. There has to be a good vibe, and while doing their makeup I can at the same time study their faces with my hands before they get in front of my camera”.
I personally, and from Troubled and tortured Beirut, have been virtually studying Renowned Danish Makeup artist and photographer Lis Casper Bang since the beginning of summer, after having discovered her totally by coincidence whilst researching her husband, the incredibly charismatic Claes Bang who portrayed Netflix’s “Dracula” so intensely and with such sadistic humor and velvety monstrosity, I found myself along with many other Lebanese, watching the series over and over again in order to grasp such originality and presence.
I was not prepared for the elegance and reserve and quiet eroticism of the art of his wife, artist Lis. A sort of contradicting, and yet compelling continuation of her husband’s larger than life performances.
I reached out to her without any false pretense, and she reciprocated so naturally that I admit I found myself suddenly nervous.
What followed were many emails that gave me, one step at a time, a clearer picture about life in Denmark, a land so beautifully civilized and ornamented with beauty and refinement that caused me to end most of my emails with phrases that betrayed my need as a dreamer to hang on to a world which no longer resembles ours, and seems indeed farfetched, and that came in the form of: “Kindest Regards from Surreal and wounded Beirut”.
Lis Kasper Bang had her own way of reciprocating my heartfelt dialogue that is usually reserved for people we are intimate with. She did not show any shock by my natural inclination as a Lebanese woman to talk from the heart. And at certain fleeting moments, I was able to catch glimpses of what seemed like an understanding of the world I came from. And therefore, there was no judgment on her part. And indeed, written glances displaying a more casual conversation popped up unexpectedly in one email or another.
She was very polite and down to earth in responding to my untamed and Middle Eastern effusive display of emotions. And I continued my virtual study of her lifestyle and pictures which portrayed her touching relationship with her husband who deserves the stardom he is steadily heading towards. And her portraits which made the subjects seemed somehow naked even when they were fully dressed. Raw portraits. So real, they did not have to hide their inner struggles or tame their inner worlds. And then of course, there were the somehow blurred and abstract pictures which were so invitingly out of reach, they almost seemed surreal. And that was exactly what I needed in order to escape the hell we are living in our beloved and crazy country.
Her story starts in Cape Town, “my mother was living in Cape Town and when I turned 18 years old I wanted to visit her there. I was already working as a model in Denmark and had been in Paris working too, so when I lived in Cape Town for one year, I worked there as well, and also did my education as a makeup artist there at the same time”.
As a model, she tells me that she was discovered at 14 years old, “but I wasn’t really serious about it at the time, and my father whom I grew up with didn’t really approve of the modeling and fashion world”.
But she was also always interested in hair and makeup “since I was very young. I was about four years old when I took all of my mother’s makeup (she was in show business at the time) to the street and had great fun with the children in the street, making their faces. I did mess up all my mother’s professional makeup!”.
Her first job as a professional makeup artist was “very stressful to me. I was working at my friend’s fancy hairdressing salon in Copenhagen (where she currently resides), and he was booked for a job with the band called B52’s, they were performing a concert in Copenhagen. He did the hair and wanted me to do the makeup. I remember my hands shaking doing Kate Pierson’s eyeliner, but she was so cool and kind to me, so that experience turned out well”.
And Lis Kasper Bang who usually in her pictures appears in front of the camera with a small, and reserved smile, believes that she has been “very lucky to be able to work with all these different genres. In theatre, fashion, film, advertising. And have been able to combine my work and experience from these various fields”.
However, what is certain, is that she has always “loved the theatre because the expression is so much bigger on stage and as a makeup artist you have to make sure that people in the last row of the theatre also catch the actors’ expressions from the makeup and hairstyles”.
Her first photo exhibition dates back to 2005, and her fascination with photography “started when I was visiting Africa for the first time when I was 18. My mother’s husband was a graphic designer and also did some advertisement photography. He gave me my first camera when we went traveling through South Africa. I just loved to see the landscapes and people through the objective. I became fascinated by the contact I got with the people, and with the result of my pictures, it became clear to me that I had an eye for what I saw through the camera”.
Lis Casper Bang has always been fascinated by people, “and everybody has a story, a feeling, a secret, a moment, etc. And I love to try to capture that moment. I always try to capture the moment between the pictures, where you are not aware of yourself. That is for me the most honest moment and interesting for me to see”.
Certainly in the beginning of her journey with photography, “I wanted to do art, but it was very difficult to get into that here in Denmark. Photo art wasn’t that big at the time. And slowly from taking pictures of friends and family that I sometimes also did at that stage, I became a portrait photographer”.
She admits to being a total perfectionist, “but I also love the coincidences and mistakes. I always work out from a feeling, it is a very private thing and only a feeling that I know about from inside of me”.
Her latest exhibition entitled I THINK I’M IN LOVE and which ended recently in one of Copenhagen’s intimate and elegant spaces, was a retrospective “but some of my latest work was also in there. Some of my pictures in it were also from a book I did in 2020. I have been working on a longer project about identities for a while, and still am, when I was asked if I wanted to do this exhibition over the summer”.
Initially she started creating a whole concept for this exhibition for a while, but she cancelled it at the last moment “because it suddenly felt really wrong. So 3 weeks before the exhibition I decided to change it all, and took old and new portraits that I staged by myself. I THINK I’m IN LOVE is also a tribute to all the people that are in the pictures”.
Most of her portraits are “actors, family, friends, and people that I found interesting. And then I have a passion for flowers. Most of my pictures are shot at my daylight tower studio, which is the absolute best light for me to shoot in”.
And of course, there are the famous portraits of her husband, the great Claes Bang. How would a woman so clearly in love with her husband go about capturing him artistically and without having her emotions entangled in the process?
“I do work as professionally with my husband as with any other person that I take pictures of. It is always important for me to make the person in front of my camera relaxed and to make them have a good time and experience. It is such a personal thing to have your photo taken, if you are not in a role as someone else but yourself”.
And there you have it. The intimacy. The reserve, which does not resemble the effusive exalted emotional expression of my background. And yet somehow they do not clash. They merge in what resembles an enchanted harmony. A bit like That which is the structured root of her understated, raw art, and her husband’s gloriously untamed performances which are far from restrained.
You might even say they resemble our Middle Eastern exuberance!
Here’s hoping.
[email protected]
تويتر
فيسبوك
يوتيوب
انستغرام
مسنجر
واتساب
بريد إلكتروني
الطباعة
