Reviews of her early work often commented on its conceptual framing and the depiction of subjects in unusual physical or emotional circumstances, with an increased degree of vulnerability.
Citing the influence of Renaissance painting, she calls the profile portrait "one of the most powerful ways of representing a person.
[8] In 2014 she collaborated with her friend and fellow artist Sophy Rickett on a project reacting to an album from the Sir Benjamin Stone Archive at the Library of Birmingham.
She received a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2017 and in 2018 she spent 6 weeks in New-York researching the collections and making new work: Meditations in an Emergency (2018),[13] a photographic series inspired by the teen protests following the tragedy at Stoneman Douglas High School[14] on Valentine’s Day 2018, and the collections of portrait silhouettes at the N-YHSM.
In 2024 von Zwehl received an RPS (The Royal Photographic Society) award for Achievement in the Art of Photography.