Alexandra Benetel has many fond memories of traveling with her family at a very young age. She remembers picking up a disposable camera at a local store and shooting all the scenes around her. Her real passion for photography, however, didn’t fully develop until she enrolled in a visual design course in high school. As she tells us, “During that time, I learned about pinhole photography, was introduced to the site Flickr and, ultimately, absolutely fell in love with photography.”
If the last name Benetel sounds familiar, you may remember it from a recent post we wrote about her brother Christian. When asked to describe how their styles differ, Alexandra told us this, “I think Christian puts a lot of himself in his concepts. I’m more focused with becoming someone else and taking on the role as a character. In saying that, I make sure that I’m able to relate to that character in some way so that there’s a little piece of me in my photographs as well. I definitely think that we edit quite differently and I’ve found that our ideas aren’t as similar as what they may have been in the past.”
To us, both are highly talented at drawing out an emotion, of making us feel a sense of vulnerability right along with her subjects. “I aim to create beautiful photographs that capture mysterious yet dream-like worlds, filled with oddities that encompass aspects of reality,” she says. “I want people to be transported to a different world, escape their life for just a little while and experience something fantastical. At the same time, I want people to relate to and feel something when viewing my work.”
