In Lookbook, Fashion Portraits 2007-2013 Louise te Poele documents seven years of graduating students of Fashion Design at ArtEZ in an extraordinary way. The result is a series of glamorous official portraits of a young generation of fashion designers. The photos are alternately raw and decadent, modest and nostalgic, and sometimes colourful and extravagant, depending on that year’s theme. Using these themes, te Poele manages to turn the multiplicity of characters and types within each year into a coherent storyline and capture the uniqueness of each person being depicted. te Poele was also a student of the department of Fashion at ArtEZ in the year 2003, but after her first year, she transferred to Fine Art. In 2007 she was first asked to photograph the final year students of the Fashion department, and by now it is an annual part of the programme. Louise te Poele’s work stood out already during her time as a student because of the distinct nature of her photos. Because of the way she processes them, her photos look like paintings, and she likes to photograph from close by, close to her subject’s skin. Piet Gerbrandy wrote about her series titled Farmers, which also appeared in book form: “These portraits exude both admiration and empathy: admiration for the determination of the subjects to make the best of life, and empathy for the futility of this struggle. […] The incredible thing about these photos is that the artist manipulates reality in such a way that a level of authenticity [of the people depicted] becomes apparent that would otherwise have escaped us.