Berning & Battista Unites Photography and Painting

PROFILE — Separate and out of touch with each other, photographer Michelangelo Di Battista and illustrator Tina Berning find unity in their respective artistic expression. Where one leaves off the other picks up, resulting in unique art that blurs the boundaries between photography, illustration, painting, and crafts.

WORDS: ERIK SEDIN, ILLUSTRATION: TINA BERNING, PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHELANGELO DI BATTISTA

Paper, brush, and paint. Tina Berning likes to illustrate the good old way, and tries to keep the digital elements out of her art from start to finish. Berning cut her teeth as an illustrator by making album and magazine covers in Berlin, where she has been living and working since the turn of the millennium. Today she’s a sought-after illustrator and fine artist, with regular appearances in publications such as the New York Times, Vogue, and Architectural Digest.

With a similar professional time frame, Italian photographer Michelangelo Di Battista has been making a name for himself as one of fashion and commercial photography’s biggest stars. Over his roughly 20-year-long he has been featured in international publications like Italian Vogue, German Vogue, Japanese Vogue, Chinese Vogue, and Harpers Bazaar, to name a few.

“I just love to see what Tina adds to my photographs, how she interprets them with her skilful and artistic creativity.” — MICHELANGELO DI BATTISTA

In 2007, at one of Di Battista’s many fashion shoots, the two creative souls’ paths first met. When learning about each other and their craft, Berning and Di Battista realized that they’re both intrigued with female beauty, and much of their respective art forms depict this very subject. The two changed contact information and immediately started working together.

Since then the pair have been working together in mesmerizing artworks that merge photography with illustration in a unique fashion. Instead of passing Di Battista’s portrait photography through digital image programmes, Berning gets to work directly onto the printed photographs. ”There is no deception. I haven't hidden anything. You can see everything that I've done. The paper buckles here and there, splatters of paint, my cat might have run over it… The end result is supposed to be a whole different picture and product” Berning told Deutsche Welle in 2010.

“When you know you only have one chance; it’s exciting when I start and I like this” — TINA BERNING

The two artists’ creative processes never intertwine and take place separately. Di Battista shoots his portraits in London, where he is based, without input from Berning who also receives the pictures free from input or instructions. ”I just love to see what Tina adds to my photographs, how she interprets them with her skilful and artistic creativity. Whether it’s with thick charcoal lines, colourful woven ribbons, texts or something completely different”, Di Battista told Odalisque Magazine in 2017. Berning adds: ”Sometimes, I have hung them up during 3 weeks on my wall, walked around and started getting a relationship with the pictures. When you know you only have one chance; it’s exciting when I start and I like this”.

Still, the result from the two artists’ joint expressions looks remarkably seamless and integrated. Di Battista’s dedication and passion over the last two decades has given him the opportunity to photograph hundreds of women, all having to be depicted individually for each shoot. From emerging talents to supermodels like Claudia Schiffer, Amber Valletta, and Julia Stegner, the photographer knows the complexity and variety of female beauty. Simultaneously, a notable majority of Berning’s illustrations are depictions of women. It’s by distinguishing female beauty so delicately and varied in each and every illustration that she excels from others. When these two experiences meet, they naturally collide.