Dutch PHOTOGRAPHER Gisele A. Lubsen received her BA in Art History from the American University of Paris and her MFA from Otis School of Art and Design in Los Angeles. She currently lives in Santa Monica, California, where she has had several exhibitions; she has also exhibited in France, Switzerland, and Greece.

Specialized in Conceptual Underwater photography, Gisele's underwater work pushes her explorations of the mystery of the portrait where the surreal leads to existential questions and timelessness. The stress and endurance of the non-oxygenated environments and the discipline of the photographic technique underwater offers a key to meaning.

Through the medium of underwater photography Gisele investigates the strange, the wonderful and the uncanny. Difficult physical situations and environments help her to study, explore, and also make sense of the world. Her underwater photographs describe an ambiguous zone, in which the primeval medium touches upon the oneiric as a boundary between life and death.

The stress of the aqueous environment is invisibly present, and produces an examination of photographic principles. The retina of the camera freezes the moment and constructs a time and memory to connect with our archetypal memory.One of Gisele's purposes for exploring portraiture underwater is to become more aware of death in life (and life in death). Watching the photographed eyes of a woman or a man acquainted with death invokes our own sense of mortality. At the same time it makes us also aware of our unconscious breathing. The photographs, in this sense, become both a memorial and a testimony.  In addition, the portrait types deny the meaninglessness of momentary appearance. Gisele is interested in art that evokes the creation of memory-identification through the body. Contemplating persons fixed in either extreme motion or in prolonged waiting can induce this.

Exploring life and death underwater, Gisele creates another reality, and humanizes her subjects by presenting them out of their usual context. Her photographs are performed fictive realities within the surreal world of the non-oxygenated memento mori environment. Her photos are also dreamscapes seducing the viewer. The psychological trompe l'œil effect adds to the slight unease.

Moreover, her work presents a strong interest in the psychologcal notion of women always having physically to perform. The lack of oxygen and alien medium point to this, and allow the images to comment on the history of pictorialism and the influence of contemporary media on women. They also are an homage to eternal iconography, whose seductiveness is here expressed in a contemporary theatrical fashion.