Portraits for founders, teams and editors.
I'm Maria. I spent ten years making documentary work, mostly in Lebanon and Iraq, which really taught me one thing: how to sit quietly in a room until people forget the camera is there. Portraits are the same job with better light.
Founders & leaders
Teams & companies
Editorial & press
A DIFFERENT APPROACH
Nobody looks like themselves in the first twenty minutes.
Most portrait sessions are booked for half an hour, which is about how long it takes anyone to stop holding their shoulders wrong. So I don't book half an hour. Sessions run three to four hours, we talk before the camera comes out, and I take only a handful of portrait commissions a month so that none of them get hurried. I edit every frame myself.
Maria Klenner. Documentary and portrait photographer, working between Beirut and Berlin, and wherever the commission is.
Five steps, and only one of them involves a camera.
THE PROCESS
You email me and we actually talk, about who the picture is for and what it has to do. No enquiry form, no package tiers, no calendar link.
Talk
01
We choose somewhere with the right light and the right meaning. Often that is your own desk, kitchen or workshop rather than a paper backdrop.
Place
02
Three or four hours, unhurried, mostly conversation. You'll get bored somewhere in the middle. That is usually the point where it starts working.
Sit
03
We go through the frames together before you leave. Choosing a picture of your own face is famously hard, so I'll tell you honestly what is working.
Choose
04
Light retouching, graded by hand, in the crops you need for press, print and profiles. Ten working days, or sooner if you're up against something.
Deliver
05