Austrian-born Sylvie Blum started a career as a well-known art and fashion model for 16 years in front of the camera with esteemed photographers such as Helmut Newton.
In 1991, she met legendary artist and photographer Günter Blum and became “his model, his muse, his wife.” By his side, Sylvie refined her understanding of light, composition, dark room techniques and other aspects of photography. After her husband’s long illness and death in 1997, Sylvie bought a Polaroid SX-70 and initially started photographing herself and published her first book “Venus” in 2000. Christie’s New York sold her Polaroids from the “Venus” Collection in 2014. Christie’s New York introduced her art to a broad audience, selling prints from different series of the past 15 years of her work. A picture from her Polaroid series “Venus” was shown on the Christie’s auctions catalog cover.
Fascinated by artistic nudes, as they were so perfectly presented in the 1930’s by photographic legends such as George Hoyningen-Huene or Horst P. Horst, Sylvie Blum started creating body fragments, photographic torsos that attain an almost sculptural impression in the artistic lighting and delicate gradation of gray tones. However, the sources of her inspiration are far more varied. Photographs from her bewitching photo series Nudes revealed the spectrum of her work. From 2000 – 2020 Sylvie published 5 art books dedicated to the human form. Her pop art “selfies” soon became famous amongst art collectors and museums. Whether on the trail of Ansel Adams, Leni Riefenstahl or Herbert List, her images all have something in common. Sylvie Blum gives them something modern and perfects the fine art photography with the utmost aesthetic quality. Sylvie has found her spot in contemporary photography. British Maxim stated “… Sylvie is the Ansel Adams of the nude female form.”
In 2005 Sylvie relocated to the USA, soon working on different art projects. Sylvie met David Fahey in Los Angeles, who soon became her mentor and artistic inspiration. In 2011, her book “Naked Beauty” edited by David Fahey was published by TeNeues. The Fahey Klein Gallery exhibited her work together with iconic photographer Herb Ritts.“A naked body is endlessly exciting and timeless. All these expressive details, textures, shapes and forms inspire my imagination as an artist. I embrace the classic aesthetic of hard light, clean angles and strong graphic to create shapes, abstracted forms or even a sculpture. I am not subject to beauty standards. My art shows the inner and outer beauty of a human being. Beauty is everywhere and everyone is beautiful
in front of my camera. Driven by my boundless imagination I discover the endless possibilities of beauty and the fascination of the human body.”
In 2008 Sylvie produced her iconic “Big Cat” series, showing naked women surrounded by lions and tigers. “To work with those beautiful, impressive animals in combination with the female body was very challenging. Every aspect of that shoot was extremely exciting and one of my biggest productions I have ever made for my artwork. My Big Cats shoot was planned for several years. It started in 2004 in South Africa and Namibia studying wild life. Working with animals and at the same time with several models is certainly a challenge since everything has to fall together to get the image I planned for.”
Sylvie passion for photography created iconic images with her space age and pop art series. In 2023 Sylvie’s work was featured in Architectural Digest in the celebrity homes of entertainment icon Ru Paul, supermodel Winnie Harlow, and actor Ellen Pompeo. Beauty mogul John Demsey is a long-time collector of Sylvie’s work and in fall of 2023 published Sylvie’s work in his celebrated book Behind the Blue Door.
Her art is published in five books. The Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA in BANGKOK exhibited Sylvie Blum’s work titled “Naked Beauty” in a 10,000 sqft exhibition showing 300 images. Sylvie Blum’s images remain in the permanent collection and exhibition of the MOCA Bangkok.
