Step into the studio of Marjon Trap, where beauty emerges from the imperfect, capturing a surreal and balanced world beyond reality.
Marjon Trap is a photographer who loves to shoot beauty in the imperfections. Intricately and surreally, she stages her images and tinkers, fiddles, adjusts, and refines them, sometimes taking over 100 shots to find the right balance. In Trap’s case, the creative process is real-time; each image is a raw, untouched representation of what’s before her lens. Withered flowers are the predominant theme in her work, and blossoms are subtly beautiful objects that contradict the popular conception of beauty. With her pure and unaltered photography, Marjon transports the viewer to a place of suspended reality and imagination. She presents scenes that are both authentic and surreal.
Describe a typical working day:
I start with setting up equipment in my studio. I sort out the materials I’m going to use. I play around with them to get a feeling of what to do with them. This can take some time. Sometimes materials are in my studio for quite a while to get a feeling. Then I decide if I want to use a ‘wet’ set, with aquariums, or a dry set, with only glass. Then I start building and creating, both focusing on the light and at the composition. In a slow process, the work begins to take shape.
Do you have a favorite space for creating your artworks?
I have a studio, with a positive vibe to it.
And how does an ideal day of creating (in your studio) look like (from start to finish)?
I start early and make myself a coffee, relaxing on the sofa in my studio. Then I set up the set as described before. In an ideal world, there are no interruptions by phone or people walking by. Just me and my art. Sometimes I bring my clarinet to study and make room in my head for the next step in the process. There is always a moment to step aside for some time and then come back and evaluate. It happens that I then start all over. This is not a problem, but part of the process I love. Back at home, I have to do a little post-processing. This is for the next day or evening.
Describe your style of art in a sentence:
The perfect beauty of the imperfect, the real fake, the perfectly balanced tension. This not only leads to wonder, but also makes your world more beautiful.
Who and what inspired you to be an artist?
As a child, I wanted to be able to do magic. And then I discovered that it is possible to create magic with a camera. There is a long list of people encouraging me to become an artist and especially a teacher at the school for photography. He sent me to a great photographer to learn from, and this person really inspired me to make more of my photography.
Name three inspirations for your work right now:
Unusual little materials, water, single-use plastic.
Is there a particular color palette that you prefer to work with, and what inspires your choice?
I love colorful, bright colors. My art has to have a positive vibe, and bright and colorful helps a lot. And it makes me happy while working.
Tell an interesting story behind a piece you’ve created…
One day, I was at my optician’s workplace for an eye check. He told me he has been collecting nose pads for glasses for 40 years. The idea behind it was that if someone came into his shop missing a nose pad, he probably would have exactly the same in his collection. Of course, this did not happen in all those years, but it was an impressive collection. He was about to throw them away, with pain in his heart. But then he saw a resemblance between the pads and the flower petals I photographed, and he asked me if I wanted to make a work for him in my style with those nose pads. And it turned out so great, and it was such a nice journey to make this work.
… and one interesting piece you own. Why did you buy it?
I own some work of Rein Janssen. I did not buy it but got it as a gift from him. I could choose from some works, and I chose a dark work with burned fruits. I love his style, which is mostly very colorful, but I also wanted it to be displayed in my living room, and my husband is less charmed by bright colors. So in this way, I have absolutely wonderful work, and I don’t have to fight over it at home.
We imagine that inspiration could strike at any time. How do you separate work from free time?
Not… In my mind, there is always something going on. And where I tried to work only in my studio on certain days, I now picked up a project with photography in shallow water, and water is everywhere.
What reforms would you like to see in the art world?
A business reform. The business model for lots of galleries is “the dream of the artist” instead of the art. By that, I mean that they make their profit through the artist instead of the art, by making the artist pay for everything. That’s their business model. Selling art is secondary. And because we artists want to make a living out of our passion, we are willing to let this happen in hope it will bring us nearer to our dream.
How do you think we could change it together?
Ah, that’s a puzzler! Because art is a difficult product, and galleries have to make a business as well. As artists, we could make a statement and not collaborate on that basis, but there will always be artists willing to take the risk because they dream.
Singulart Insight
Marjon Trap’s photos are surreal and enchanted. The things that the viewer can see daily become an exquisite combination of beauty and brokenness. Her fairytale-like tension of focusing on the raw essence of her subjects leaves her audience in a mesmerizing, worried place. Singulart’s team is particularly inspired by Trap’s way of working, which invites people to see beyond the aesthetics of beauty and to experience the imperfect and the unexpected as beautiful. Her work is about how art can reveal, outward the hidden magic in the everyday. We thank Marjon for sharing her approach to creating art and hope that the reader feels as inspired as us.
