It's funny to think how different you can look throughout the day. Are your eyes brighter after you've had your first coffee? Are your shoulders more relaxed after that first cigarette? Does the puffiness in your face go away around 3pm? Is your makeup smudged at 5 in the afternoon? Belgian photographer Barbara Iweins brings us her portrait series, 7 AM / 7 PM, which shows people at two very different times of the day, side by side. It showcases how different people can look after a full day of being awake and active versus when they have just woken from a night's sleep.
Four years into her larger project, Au Coin De Ma Rue, Iweins decided she wanted to show people's vulnerability in the early hours of the morning. “I decided to invite them to spend the night at my place or I would go over to their place and I am making a picture at 7pm and and I wake them up at 7am to make a second picture of them. I felt that the only moment of the day when a person doesn’t have any shield is the moment a person opens his eyes for the first time. I always adored this 'fighting' moment when our conscious gets out of the irreality of dreams to face reality – just the moment before the world hurts us.”
