Danielle Kwaaitaal is an artist and photographer from Amsterdam. From 1984, she studied pattern drawing at the Bijenvelt fashion academy in Amsterdam. After an audiovisual course at the Rietveld Academy, she graduated in 1991 with the series Bodylogos. She edited the photographic shots of herself first manually and later by computer. Her series 'The Five Senses' was produced with the paintbox, followed in 1992 by her first solo exhibition Bodyscapes at the Bloom Gallery in Amsterdam. She explored the boundaries of photography with her digitally processed photographs. The female body, beauty and water were often the subjects. In 1994, she targeted a young audience from the house and dance culture as a veejay. Her series Bubbling (1994) shows images consisting of body parts immersed underwater in interplay with air bubbles.
She regularly collaborates in theatre performances. To do so, she travelled the world with her suitcase full of video tapes and performed in clubs and galleries. Among others, she appeared at the Cannes International Film Festival and Expo '98 in Lisbon. After the turn of the millennium, she focused more and more on the visual arts.
In 2002, she was on the jury of the Prix de Rome for photography. Her first solo DVD HI&LO on tour was released in early 2003. In 2004, she made the underwater fairytale FLO, starring Ellen ten Damme. Combining photography and painting, her photographs are carefully staged in front of the camera and sometimes digitally edited.
Advertising assignments she did for companies such as KPN and Sanex. Her free work can be seen in public spaces. For instance, she made panels of life-size photos of Moroccan and Dutch landscapes for the new district office in Bos en Lommer. For the corridor between the B and C piers at Schiphol Airport, she made Tracing Reality, a 450 m² composition on glass, Whispering Waters (2009) and Hidden Series (2012-2013) were acquired by museums.
Her work is included in several corporate and museum collections, including the Stedelijk Museum, the Groninger Museum, Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle and the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul.