Black-and-white low-key portrait of a woman emerging from darkness

Portrait & editorial photography

Adrian Voss

Low-light portraits, editorial commissions and studies in shadow — Berlin

Selected work

Four recent plates — portraits, editorial commissions and the quieter studies between them.

About the studio

I photograph people the light almost misses. Most of my work happens in a small Berlin studio with one lamp, a black backdrop and enough patience to wait for the face nobody performs.

Clients come to me for portraits that feel closer to paintings than headshots — and editorial work that keeps that same stillness on a deadline.

— Adrian

  • Based in Berlin, DE
  • Practice Independent, since 2016
  • Focus Low-key portrait & editorial
  • Currently Booking autumn sittings
Portrait in the studio
Self-portrait, studio — winter

Ways of working

Every engagement starts the same way: a short conversation about what the pictures are for — and whether my kind of darkness suits them.

All services & rates

Commissioned portraits

from €450

A private sitting in the Kreuzberg studio — one lamp, no hurry.

Editorial & campaigns

day rate

Covers, lookbooks and stage portraits, delivered on deadline.

Prints & editions

from €120

Signed baryta prints of selected frames, proofed by hand.

Ongoing series

Personal work between commissions — the slow projects that keep the eye honest.

Half in Shadow

Series 01

Half in Shadow

Faces lit by a single source, printed almost black.

Upward Light

Series 02

Upward Light

What a face does when the light comes from below the frame.

The Long Exposure

Series 03

The Long Exposure

Sittings that last an hour so a second can feel unguarded.

The ledger

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Years behind the camera

Independent since a borrowed flat in 2016

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Portrait sittings

Most of them in one small dark room

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Editorial commissions

Magazines, labels and two theatre houses

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Gallery shows

The prints leave the studio now and then

What sitters say

I walked in dreading having my picture taken and left with the only portrait of myself I have ever framed. He barely said a word — he just waited until I stopped posing.
Lena Hartwig Author
The cover he shot for us ran almost unedited. One lamp, forty minutes, and the exact stillness the piece needed — nobody believes it was not a production.
Jonas Riedel Editor, Kammer Magazin
Adrian photographed our whole ensemble in a single evening and every actor looked more like themselves than they do in the mirror.
Sofia Brandt Artistic director

Commissions & sittings

The dark is not empty. Let it hold your portrait.