Loretta Lux


Loretta Lux is a fine art photographer known for her surreal portraits of young children. She lives and works in Ireland.
Lux has received the Infinity Award for Art from the International Center of Photography. Her work is held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Art Institute of Chicago and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Life and work

Lux was born in Dresden, East Germany. She graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich in the 1990s, and debuted at the Yossi Milo gallery, New York City in 2004.
Lux executes her compositions using a combination of photography, painting and digital manipulation. Her work usually features young children. She trained as a painter at Munich Academy of Art, and is influenced by painters such as Agnolo Bronzino, Diego Velázquez, Phillip Otto Runge.
In her essay, Francine Prose suggests that seeds of her East German upbringing are found in Lux's photographs. "... during Lux's childhood, the state channeled reality through the upbeat fantasy of Socialist realism. This was a society in which the cult of secrecy and surveillance was a daily reality.

Awards