Susan Eline’s photography began with an inheritance. During the pandemic she took over the collection of analogue cameras assembled by her grandfather and decided to learn how to use them. What started as a way of walking through Amsterdam, testing old cameras and rediscovering a creative part of herself quickly became a portrait practice rooted in the city’s music and nightlife communities.
Friends needed press photographs. Then other artists did too. Work with IsBurning, Minimal Collective and venues and festivals including Club RAUM, BRET, De School, Draaimolen and Drift followed. A private curiosity became professional almost before Susan Eline had time to plan for it.
Taking time with another person
Analogue portraiture appeals to Susan Eline because its technical demands create presence. Metering light, selecting a camera and film, composing carefully and knowing there are only a limited number of frames changes the energy of a shoot.
That slowness is not only for the photographer. It creates a responsibility toward the person in front of the camera. Susan Eline often photographs musicians and artists rather than professional models, so trust and comfort are central to the process. She listens, asks questions and tries to understand who someone is before deciding how they should be photographed.
The aim is not to transform the subject into a preconceived character. It is to recognise something already present and emphasise it through her own visual language.
Identity beneath the surface
Over time, identity has become more central to Susan Eline’s work. She is interested in the gap between who we believe ourselves to be, how we present ourselves and how other people interpret us. Traits that appear fixed may turn out to be learned protections; appearances that seem to reveal a person can conceal as much as they show.
That sensitivity affects the photographs. An image can appear polished and certain while carrying something less stable underneath. Susan Eline’s own experiences have made her increasingly interested in those contrasts and in the parts of a person that are not immediately visible.
Choosing the camera for the person
Susan Eline treats equipment as part of the emotional vocabulary of a portrait. Different cameras, film stocks, locations and times of day can make the same subject feel entirely different. She adjusts those choices to the artist rather than imposing a fixed setup on everyone.
Her workflow begins before the shoot with references and conversation. She asks subjects to share images or moods they connect with, then combines those cues with what she has learned about them. Locations may come from places she has remembered while travelling, from wandering Amsterdam, or even from exploring an area first through Google Maps and then on foot.
During the shoot, the planning loosens. Walking and talking create opportunities for exact locations and gestures to emerge in the moment.
Letting imperfection stay
Control has limits in Susan Eline’s photographs by design. She may decide on atmosphere and composition, but she does not want to dictate every detail inside the frame. Graffiti, messy walls and unexpected movements are often kept rather than removed because they create contrast and make an image feel more real.
Some of her favourite photographs are the ones that fall slightly outside the plan. The subject moves differently, the location contributes something unforeseen, or an awkward element introduces a tension that a cleaner image would lose.
The photograph that changed the scale of the work
A press shoot with her friend Guido was the first time Susan Eline photographed someone on analogue film. His DJ career was developing and he needed new images. When those photographs circulated, requests from other artists started arriving quickly.
That shoot became a threshold: photography moved from something she did out of curiosity into something other people actively wanted from her. The transition happened faster than she expected, but it confirmed that the instinct she had followed through her grandfather’s cameras could become a working practice.
One person, many lenses
Susan Eline’s next body of work is turning toward perception itself. She is fascinated by the idea that there is never only one version of a person: self-perception, another person’s perception and the image constructed by a camera can all coexist without one becoming definitive.
She wants to connect that idea to her long-standing fascination with devices from different periods—old iPhones, digicams, Sony Handycams, analogue cameras and contemporary tools. Each carries its own visual sense of time and memory. Photograph the same person through several of them and the subject remains physically unchanged while the image becomes something else.
For Susan Eline, that has become a metaphor for relationships and identity: the subject does not change, but the lens does. The next stage of her practice is about using that fact not only aesthetically, but personally—asking viewers to consider how many versions of themselves and others may be true at once.
Developing Stories is a Berlin Photo Studio editorial series about the people, memories and lives behind the film we develop.
