With this collection of (self-) portraits entitled Women (2003-2006), I present various types of women by applying a strategy that involves one person's acting out a series of fictive characters, placed in prearranged environments and/or with the use of selected props.

The women in my photographs are simple and extravagant at the same time, and while they may seem like parodies of the values imposed by society, they eventually show their 'true faces', expressing their unique fantasies and follies. Whether they are public figures posing at work or anonymous housewives at home, teenagers or seniors caught in a break between daily rituals, almost all of them show an obsession with seduction, hiding and revealing themselves – and with the permanent questioning of the essence of the feminine principle and its image today. These imaginary women seem pleased with themselves, and radiate self-confidence; and after lengthier observation, they become attractive in a somewhat 'twisted' way. They certainly do not leave us indifferent.

The idea was to maintain an apparently cold distance in relation to the characters shown, by presenting minimal variations of facial expressions, while at the same time reaching the core of human vulnerability and naïveté. The minimal acting and the refusal to conceal that we are the target of the 'same' gaze all along, transform into a conscious game which temporarily hypnotises the viewer, and transfers power to the very mechanism of identity repetition and the production of new clichés.  

Images begin to work when, instead of some fixed emotion, there is some ambivalance in or around them. Often, what we recognise in someone else – a different being, i.e. identity – is potentally something that we recognise in ourselves, even if only latently. And thus, these representation of women become even more farcical, because with a measured dose of humour they show what most people want to censor about themselves.