Editor’s Pick: Felix Kunze

I first heard the name Felix Kunze from fellow photographers Sue Bryce and Kristie Lee early last year. “You have to check out Felix’s work; you have to meet Felix; Felix is a lighting master,” they would tell me repeatedly. Then, by chance, I opened up an email and saw these striking images for a lookbook shot by Kunze himself. 

The photographs were for little gloriana, a company that makes matching dresses for girls and their beloved American Girl Dolls. In this case, Kunze showcased the personalities of the young girls and their complementing dolls for the company, with the resulting images now appearing front and center on its website.

all Photos © Felix Kunze

As the East Berlin-born, Sussex, England-raised editorial/commercial portrait photographer—who has worked with the likes of Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino—tells it, “My goal with every image I take is to show the beauty, grace, strength and enthusiasm of people. I focus on non-models and place regular people in exaggerated situations that highlight an aspect of who they are.”

Kunze—who shot the images using a range of backdrops from Oliphant Studio in Manhattan, where he is currently based—says the little gloriana brand cast the girls from a wide pool of applicants and “hit the nail on the head with each of them, choosing girls that would bring their personalities to bear.”

What draws me to Kunze and his work is that whether he is shooting a lookbook for little gloriana, documenting the work of a nonprofit in Haiti to help orphans there or working with people who inspire him, his focus remains steadfast. You can see this throughout his commercial, editorial and documentary work.

Look for Kunze and Bryce later this month on CreativeLive in their course “The Lighting Challenge: Natural vs. Studio.”

See this story in the digital edition.