Bet Orten is a Czech photographer whose work moves fluidly between fine art, documentary, portrait, and landscape photography. Her images are defined by a poetic, strongly narrative quality, often evoking a sense of myth and visual storytelling.
She draws on extensive international experience: she lived in New York, assisting photographer Steven Klein, and later spent several years in London, where she completed her MA in Fashion Photography at London College of Fashion, UAL.
In 2012, she was awarded Photographer of the Year at Czech Grand Design. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Chemistry Gallery (Prague), Art Market Budapest, Zoya Museum (Bratislava), and RED Gallery (London).
In 2017, she completed an artist residency in Australia, which she later reflected in her solo exhibition When I Grow Up.
Her work has been published in a range of international magazines, including BLUE PAPER Magazine, Vice, ELLE, Pigeon & Peacocks, COOLER, VOGUE CS, and Commarts.
Her practice explores themes of femininity and female experience, intergenerational dialogue, and the poetry of everyday life.
THE STORY BEHIND ATELIÉR
“I had been dreaming about this place for many years. At some point, I made a decision — and from then on, I did everything to make it real. Things tend to align when that happens.
In spring 2025, I signed a contract and got the keys to an old workshop in a courtyard near Stromovka.
The most important thing for me was light — natural daylight. And that’s what these old spaces offer.
There was dust, debris, a lot of work — but also a strong sense that this was the right thing to do. I couldn’t do it differently.
Maybe it was a milestone. But more than that, it was something that needed time to grow — to become a space of my own.
Perhaps my fuel was the old, decaying wood of words I used to hear as a young photographer from older men: women belong in the studio only in front of the lens.
That wood burned away with the last white-painted brick wall and became part of the past.
What remains now are women who step in front of my lens — in front of me, a woman, a photographer. In dialogue, in safety and in the risk they choose for themselves.
