Photographer Carl Kleiner (28) and artist/ stylist Evelina Bratell (28) created a wonderful food shoot for BLEND, in which they depict all sorts of food in their simplest form. The creative couple from Stockholm, Sweden, went to art school together and fell in love. Carl&Evelina: ‘The collaboration has always come natural to us even though it’s just half a year that we´ve been working together professionally.’

How close is your collaboration? Do you think of everything together or do stick to your own discipline?
‘It varies a bit from time to time but most often we interfere with each others niche a lot. It´s a collaboration and we often redo and rethink the picture together if someone is not pleased with the result.’

How did you come up with the idea of the food shoot for BLEND?
‘The IKEA pictures we made last summer have been described as minimalistic inspired. I don´t think we thought about that a lot when we made them, and that´s probably why we felt obligated to research a bit about minimalism. But our research was not as deep as its artists concepts, we agreed on them to be a good foundation for the series and filled some blanks with new stuff.’

What do the titles of the images refer to, such as Paraphrase Of Donald Judd?
‘It´s a hommage to Donald Judds stacks from the 60´s. All of the paraphrases have a “mother” made by the artist in the title.’

What’s the most important aspect of the sorts of food you have used? Does the taste or smell of each product have anything to do with it? On what criteria did you select the depicted products?
‘Both shape, color and texture was considered. Some of it had not so appealing smells and was certainly not chosen for it… We had a few works in mind when we went shopping and chose products that for some reason fulfilled a purpose in the series.’

Carl, do you focus on still life photography, or do you also do other projects?
‘I tend to focus more on still life during winter. But I love to shoot other stuff as well. Animals for example. I also work a lot with collages.’

Evelina, what kind of styling do you prefer to do? I understand you have been doing both food and fashion styling projects?
‘I feel much more free in styling still lifes than fashion on a model. Food has turned out to be exceptional free of boundaries for commissioned work with Carl. I have a love/hate relationship with fashion… It´s complicated.’

Can you tell us something about future projects?
‘We have a wedding coming up, does that count? Haha.’

www.carlkleiner.com
www.carlkleiner.com/diary
www.agentbauer.com/photographers/carlkleiner