My images are an invitation to cherish the fragility, changeability and fleetingness of every little moment in life.
Born in Warnsveld, The Netherlands, in 1988, Lotte Ekkel is a self-taught fine art photographer who lives and works in Amsterdam. She works without a predetermined plan and uses only natural light, allowing attention, atmosphere and chance to guide the image. Ekkel is drawn to small moments that are easily overlooked: a shift across a wall, a reflection, an empty passage, a fragment of architecture or a brief alignment of colour and form. Through photography, she removes visual noise and gives these passing observations space to be seen.
Light is both subject and method in Lotte Ekkel's practice. Photography captures light, yet light itself exists in a constant present. Time becomes perceptible only when light touches a surface, reaches the eye or activates a memory. Ekkel's images emerge at this intersection between the external world and the viewer's perception of it. They are precise without feeling staged, and poetic without abandoning the ordinary.
Her work is grounded in the idea that perception is never stable. A place changes as light moves through it, just as an experience changes through memory and perspective. This awareness gives Ekkel's photographs their quiet ambiguity. They can feel still while holding the suggestion of continuous movement underneath. Rather than describing a location, she stays close to how it was first felt, before it becomes fixed as story.
In Anywhere Yellow, made in Morocco, Ekkel moves through architecture, silence and in-between spaces. The title does not refer simply to a colour, but to a fleeting sensation that is difficult to name and already passing as it is experienced. Forging the Sun and Weaving the Moon, created in Yunnan, explores two complementary modes of looking. The sun represents active attention, structure and clarity; the moon represents receptivity, intuition and surrender. The series moves between these forces, asking how an image can be both shaped and allowed to appear.
Lotte Ekkel has shown at Photo Basel, SCOPE Miami, Art Rotterdam and Unseen Amsterdam. In 2025, she was selected for the SO Award, Selection of Dutch Photography, and longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize. NewHouse Gallery represents Lotte Ekkel in Amsterdam. Browse available works by Lotte Ekkel and explore her exhibition history.