| Natalie Dybisz | |
| Birth Place: | Leeds, West Yorkshire, England |
| Notable Works: | Surreal Fashion |
| Known For: | Fine-art fashion photography |
| Style: | Surrealism, baroque |
| Education: | University of Sussex |
| Spouse: | Matthew Lennard |
Natalie Aniela Dybisz (born 1986), known professionally as Miss Aniela, is a British fine-art fashion and surrealist photographer.[1] [2] Selvedge describes her work as a "fus[ion of] traditional photography with digitally enhanced motifs and surrealism."
Dybisz was born in 1986 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.[3] A self-taught photographer,[4] she began taking self-portraits at 15 but began focusing on it at 21 while studying English and Media at the University of Sussex.[1] [3] [5] [6]
Dybisz started posting her self-portraits on Flickr in April 2006 and quickly garnered online popularity.[7] After leaving university, she assumed she wouldn't be able to commit fully or professionally to photography for another year or two at least.[8] Five months later, however, she was contacted by Microsoft and asked to speak at their Pro Photo Summit in Seattle about digital photography.[7] [5] At this point, she decided to quit her job to pursue photography full-time.[8]
Dybisz utilizes models and practical effects in the first part of her process, then does digital post-production using Photoshop.[9] She is inspired by her environment, dreams, experiences, literature, and fine art, particularly 16th-century chiaroscuro artists, such as Caravaggio.[2] [1] She has shot in mansion, castles, and stately homes in France and England, such as Château de Champlâtreux, and in other locations such as abandoned buildings.[10] [2] Normal Magazine described her work as "combin[ing] baroque aesthetics and the directives of commercial work."[11]
Dybisz and her husband Matthew host the Fashion Shoot Experience, a workshop held in interesting shooting locations in London, Los Angeles, New York, Iceland, and other countries in Europe.[6] [5] In 2010 and 2017, Dybisz was named "One to Watch" by the Saatchi Gallery in London.[12] [13] She also teaches courses on photography and photoshop.[14] [15] She has been featured in El País, NY Arts, Plastik Magazine, TechMag, American Photo, Playboy Spain, ALARM Magazine, and Vogue Italia.[6] [7] Exhibition locations include Saatchi Gallery, Houses of Parliament, Waldemarsudde, and Vouge Italia's space in Milan.[6] Kai Mayfair and Hôtel de Crillon have also displayed her work.[16] [12]
Dybisz's first professional exhibition was "locally in Brighton" while her Self-Gazing series of self-portraits were the first to be invited internationally.[5] [17] The Ecology series was one of her earlier collections and showed the "relationship between humans and nature through visual references to pollution, deforestation and climate engineering."[18] [5] In 2011, she started Surreal Fashion, which icanbecreative.com described as "where fashion meets fine art, beauty meets absurdity, and couture meets chaos."[18] [19] In 2014, she did a fantasy photoshoot for Nikon[20] and released her Faces collection, which "merg[es] large-scale faces with hundreds of paintings from art history."[17] In 2017, she worked both on Barocco, a collection inspired by the Baroque and Rococo eras,[21] and Birth Undisturbed, a series about childbirth as an empowering experience for women worldwide.[22] [18]
She has published two books:
Dybisz's husband Matthew Lennard works with her under the Miss Aniela name.[5] [24] The stillborn birth of their son Evan in 2013 inspired and informed her Birth Undisturbed series. They also have a daughter, born 2014/2015.[18] [22]