Unsettling images part of new show

Loretta Lux's The Drummer.

Whatever beat this little girl is drumming to, it's a spooky one. Dresden-born photographer Loretta Lux's The Drummer is a haunting image, one of a series of strange photographs suiting the spirit of unease permeating the New Gallery's major group show, Mixed Up Childhood, which opens next weekend as part of AK05.


Lux, who trained as a painter and only started photography a few years ago, makes portraits of children which start out as straight studio studies, with costumes and props, then she sails off into the realm of the surreal through digital dabbling and Photoshop. The aim, she says, is to create "imaginary pictures dealing with the idea of childhood", and her fascinating, unsettling and frankly scary works have made her a star in the United States and beyond.


Some critics liken her kids to aliens, others call them changelings. It comes as no surprise, then, to learn Lux grew up listening to the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm.