Vanessa Leissring is a Dortmund based photographer. She understands herself as a hybrid between art (influenced by nouvelle vague, the french cinema and e.g. Edward Ruscha) and commercial projects. She photographed for Frame Magazine, NRW Bank, NRW Invest, Universal Music, Wallpaper Magazine..She walks the fine line between these two worlds, capturing moments, evoking feelings, raising questions and encouraging dialogue. 

 After her diploma in photodesign at FH Dortmund she has been interning for artists such as Martin Parr, as well as making a name for herself by bringing international projects to life. She lived in Berlin and London and founded her own studio in Dortmund more than 10 years ago. Her main focus is people photography / portrait. 

 In 2015 she started teaching as well. She continues to pass on her knowledge to students at two universities; FH Dortmund and Alanus Kunstakademie in Bonn. Her subjects include composition, critique, analysis and the history of photographical styles. 

 In her own projects, such as “youth club”, “sports fields”, „adria“, and „amusement parks“ she captures empty places which seem disfunctional out of their natural purpose. by omission, she depicts what is painfully missing in those scenes: human interaction. without human joy, those un-places seem alien, profoundly lonely, ironic and depressing. Empty, left and forlorn, she teaches us how much a place is about the people who fill it with personality, emotion and drama. 

 For more than a decade she has contributed to her own project “petrol stations”. In this long term study Vanessa shows petrol stations at night. Devoid of human activity their simple, modular, almost spaceshiplike architecture comes into focus. 

 A recent project is about queer life in the 2020s, queer identities and gender bending.