by Yvette Depaepe 

Lotta van Droom  takes us on a journey through her phantasmagoric world.  For her, it is not particularly important to show reality.  Her pictures show the fantasy taking place only in her thoughts. For this reason, photo editing and  montages are playing a major role in  her work. With digital photography and editing programs, she removes limits and breaks structures.  Lotta creates images of people and scenarios as they do not occur in the real world. 

Let us explore a little more Lotte's infinite creativity through this interview and find out more about this exceptional artist.

'2^nd hand'

At the age of 15, I got an analogue camera as a present and discovered my love for photography. Soon after, I started investing in equipment for a dark room.I loved experimenting with exposure, colouring and all other possibilities that arose from it. In 2010 I switched to digital photography and since then I'm redefining myself and my ideas.

As long as I can remember I felt the desire to discover and to make new experiences. The older I became, the more I've grown fascinated by the excitement we felt as children when we saw, learned and experienced new things for the first time.
Simultaneously, I felt sorrow about the fact those times became rarer as we grew older.

We know our world, our environment and all that comes with it and barely anything can surprise or fascinate us any more.
Because of this, I started imagining, how it would be to see a new world and experience a never known life.New landscapes, new flower fields, new creatures, new histories and so on. Some kind of wanderlust for a strange and alien reality.
This led to my fascination for paraphrasing common things, to givethem a new meaning and to displaythem in a different context - combining and creating a new usage for them.

Most things possess an inherent beauty we are all used to. By putting them in new correlations, they can become even more beautiful and sometimes surpass the original source they replaced. Bottle caps that transform into a wig for example, or cucumber slices which transform into alienated flowers.

'vena'

'strange world D5'

For me the fascination for sublime combinations doesn't stop with day-to-day objects. It stretches further into history, linguistics, architecture and other art forms. For example old historical buildings combined with modern architecture, old, no longer used, wordscombined with our present language, elderly people wearing youthful clothes and so on.

So I decided to combine my „weapon of choice“ for expressing myself, photography, with paintings and collages on the one hand and crafting costumes out of rubbish on the other.
With painting as one of the oldest art forms merged with the much younger art forms and the result is a very interesting collaboration. It creates new opportunities in structure and expressions and a new way to look at things.

'red with imposter'

'the dawn of two'

'alien people - raven'

Recycled materials and rubbish challenge their old purpose, presenting new usages and telling new fanciful stories.

'first dying thought'

'kuan'

'bhar'

Another big part of my art consists of the desire to bring some of the pictures I have in my mind to life. To give them an actual face if you will.
It's not particularly important to show reality in my pictures. I want to show a fantasy world that takes place only in my thoughts. For this reason, photo editing and montages are playing a major role in my work. Digital photography and editing programs provide the means to remove limits and to break structures. They enable the creation of images of people and scenarios, as they do not occur in the real world.

In summary, I'm a person wandering in fantasy worlds.I want to express those images through photographs, to let other people have a glance at these worlds and to participate.

It's beautiful and I'm very happy that people find enjoyment in my work and perhaps thanks to my pictures, they can travel to other worlds in their minds, too.

'beneath'

'mantis theory'

'overture'

'in between'

'psyche hunter'

'neutral wave'

'anderwelt'