Anyone currently visiting Foam and entering Mid-Air is immediately met by a curtain hanging across the back wall of the first room. The image on the rippling fabric reveals the back wall of Blommers & Schumm's Amsterdam studio. At its centre: a large canvas, rolled out as a neutral backdrop for a shoot, flanked by shelving units packed with folders, boxes, and other bits and pieces. This is where their ideas take shape—before the camera ever clicks. It’s where the duo endlessly debate what they want to show, and more importantly: how.

The exhibition functions like a studio visit. Without uttering a word, the artists offer us a glimpse behind the scenes. Take, for example, the photograph of Anuschka Blommers’ father, taken of him standing in the doorway of the living room in her childhood home, as part of a fashion shoot. The image hangs beside the threshold to the second gallery space. Directly visible through that same threshold is another photograph—this time of Ruby, a friend of Niels Schumm’s son, standing in the same doorway, in the same room, but years later. We peer through portals. Our eyes are invited in, but we ourselves never enter.

Alongside portraits of their children, relatives, close friends—and well-known figures such as film director Steve McQueen, actress Tilda Swinton, and fashion designers Viktor & Rolf—it is especially the recurring portraits of Ruby that suggest how far recognition stands from truly knowing. Ruby’s slightly unsettled gaze peering beyond the lens mirrors the uncertainty evoked by the portraits themselves: what does it mean to know someone—or to think you do?

The outcome of their work is a dialogue between what they want to show and what we, as viewers, want to see. What at first appears impossible often turns out to be entirely feasible—for the simple reason that a photograph can be endlessly re-photographed. Yet many of the objects in their images that appear to be falling are not frozen mid-air by the camera alone; they are physically, though invisibly, anchored by the duo in their state of suspension. The studio gives them the spatial freedom to sculpt time; photography, with its single fixed perspective, seals it into something timeless.

The photographs of Blommers & Schumm look back at us, reflecting what we long to see. One image shows everyday objects arranged to form a face, gazing directly at us. It is our brain that recognises the face, and the camera lens that convinces us it is truly there: by taking precisely the right perspective, the depth between the objects collapses into the flat plane of the photograph—or rather, into the skin of a face behind which an entire inner world seems to reside. She is composed of studio lights, a vacuum cleaner, a hole punch, tape, tubes and backdrop cloth, gear cases and camera trunks. By granting us access to their studio, Blommers & Schumm effectively turn their working process into a mirror of materialised thought—our minds becoming the darkroom in which these images take shape.

Anuschka Blommers (b. 1969, NL) and Niels Schumm (b. 1969, NL) have been collaborating since 1997. They create photoshoots and campaigns for major fashion houses and designers, including Versace, Viktor & Rolf, Gucci, Balenciaga, Hermès, Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Louis Vuitton, Isabel Marant, Loewe, and Raf Simons. Their work has also appeared in magazines such as Fantastic Man, The Gentlewoman, Self Service, Purple, AnOther, Buffalo, Modern Matter, and Interview. Foam holds eight of their works in its permanent collection, and in 2011 they took part in the museum’s travelling group exhibition Still/Life: Dutch Contemporary Photography. Their first book, Anita and 124 Other Portraits (Valiz), was published in 2006. Their new book, More (Roma Publications), is being released concurrently with their exhibition Mid-Air at Foam. 

MIRJAM KOOIMAN is Head of Artistic Programming at Foam, where she leads the museum’s curatorial and editorial teams. She holds a BA in Art History and MA in Curating Arts & Culture from the University of Amsterdam. She has curated over 40 exhibitions and initiated international collaborations in Mexico, Nigeria, and Indonesia to foster a global dialogue on photography. From early darkroom experiments to the latest technological innovations, Kooiman explores photography’s evolving and enigmatic nature — and, through that lens, what it means to be a photography museum today.