Anna Janßen
Photography BA(Hons)
Royal Academy Of Art The Hague KABK
Specialisms: Photography / Film / Art Direction
Location: Den Haag, Netherlands
Anna Janßen
First Name: Anna
Last Name: Janßen
Specialisms: Photography / Film / Art Direction
Sectors:
My Location: Den Haag, Netherlands
University / College: Royal Academy Of Art The Hague KABK
Course / Program Title: Photography BA(Hons)
About
Anna Janßen (b. 1999) is a Polish visual artist and photographer based in The Hague, The Netherlands. Her practice centers on staged photography and video installation, blending hyperreal aesthetics with feminist and activist narratives. She explores nuanced, often unspoken experiences of women in public and private spaces—focusing on themes like harassment, emotional vulnerability, and gendered power dynamics.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Janßen developed a cinematic visual language shaped by constructed compositions, self-portraiture, and collective storytelling. Her recent project, “It’s not all men, but it’s always a man,” stages real testimonies of gendered harassment in urban settings and includes a video work featuring “unsafe” public locations marked on safety-reporting apps, layered with soundscapes and anonymous voiceovers. The project creates space for reflection and reclamation, transforming fear into visibility.
Her work challenges the boundary between documentary and fiction, blending personal and social truths through immersive installations. Collaboration is central to her process—she often incorporates interviews and community-sourced material to connect individual experience with broader systemic critique.
Janßen’s work has been exhibited across Europe, including the UK and the Netherlands. She sees photography as a space of resistance and refuge, using it to foster empathy, protest injustice, and amplify silenced voices.
This photographic project challenges the viewer to reconsider what is seen, what is felt, and what is ignored. It’s not all men, but it’s always a man stages moments of everyday harassment—often dismissed, invisible, or normalized—and reframes them in carefully constructed, cinematic photographs based on real testimonies. The work pushes against conventional ideas of documentary truth by blending staged imagery with authentic narratives. Instead of capturing spontaneous moments, it deliberately reconstructs scenes of discomfort, fear, and vulnerability—using photography not to reflect reality as it appears, but to reveal what it conceals. The emotional and psychological weight carried in these spaces rarely enters the visual record, yet profoundly shapes the experience of those who inhabit them. By occupying the blurred space between legality and morality, this work reveals how public spaces can become sites of invisible violence. It asks: How can women feel free in places where they are never truly safe?
Competitions
