FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Anya Anti
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen talks to Anya Anti, a New York-based, internationally published, and award-winning photo artist who specializes in on-location conceptual female portraiture.
This podcast is brought to you by FRAMES, a high-quality quarterly printed photography magazine. You can find out more about FRAMES at www.readframes.com.
So I was posing there with this like this paper giant paper plane, and my husband taking me pictures, and all the tourists and photographers started to line up behind him and taking pictures of me as well.
SPEAKER_02Because I like, I guess I you know did quite a show over there.
SPEAKER_01This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is your today's host, W. Scott Olston, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_04Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olsen, and today, folks, today we are going into some of the most creative, some of the most evocative, some of the most personally moving types of photography that I've ever encountered. We're getting into conceptual photography. We're getting into fine art photography. And there is nobody on the planet, as far as I'm concerned, who is more interesting or more better at this than Anya Anti. Anya's been called the Tim Burton of Creative Portrait Photography by the folks over at Expert Photography. She describes herself as an on-location fine artist, conceptual uh photographer, also describes herself as a storytelling photo artist. Her list of accomplishments is seemingly endless. Um, I love in an interview, by the way, with Nikon a while back, they it was titled The Digital Magic of Anya Anti's Unexpected Images. Unexpected is a term I want to come back to uh here in a little bit. Her awards go on and on and on, including being named one of the world's top 10 fine art photographers. I'm really looking forward to this because this is photography that just moves me every single time I see it. Anya, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_03Hi. Well, that was quite an introduction. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I was sitting here blushing a little bit.
SPEAKER_04Well, good. Blushing is great, especially in an audio-only podcast.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, this is you know, I do street work, I do documentary work, I do photojournalism. And so I look at your work and I think sometimes I'm missing the boat. There's this whole big world out there of conceptual photography, of fine art photography that as a viewer I benefit from, and I don't have a clue how to get started with this. Let's do the origin story first, though. I mean, you're from Ukraine. You are probably the only photographer I know who graduated from the National Metallurgical Academy. And it seems like a big leap there. Got your first camera in 2009, little Nikon D60. Okay, tell me and you describe yourself as always being artistic as a kid, not tremendously good at drawing, but you know, you can sketch that kind of stuff. But then the camera came along. So tell tell me how photography took over heart and soul.
SPEAKER_03Uh so yeah, you're right. As you mentioned already, I've always been a creative kid. Like I used to paint and draw. I didn't, I used to do all sorts of stuff, like play-doh, you know, all creative things kids usually do. Um, I never finished an art school, like I've never had like a proper education in arts, but I've always been good in drawing. Like I can, if I look at the picture, I can't paint it uh with like paints, even though I have no idea about like how to do that properly. But anyway, so I've I've always had that, and I feel like it also helped me a lot in my photography journey because I had this like inner sense of composition and color. Like I never really studied it, studied it uh like I always had it. It's just um with like more practice I got better. Uh but anyway, so like I've never had a proper art education and I don't really know how to paint properly. But then digital photography came along, and it was like a perfect solution for me because suddenly I can create these pictures without being able to draw properly, but also like with the click of a button, I can already start doing this, you know, images.
SPEAKER_04So, what what happened to engineering and material science and all of that?
SPEAKER_03Oh, that was like um, yeah, that was never my dream career, to be honest. Like, I've always wanted to be some sort of an artist. But but but yeah, like uh my thinking was practical that back then, because it was like over a decade ago, back then, especially in Ukraine, I couldn't see myself as a professional artist. Like there was no such a career back then. So my thinking was like, oh, I'm gonna get this like engineering degree, whatever, especially my father used to work there. Um, and then I will figure out what to do with my life. I just needed like a you know a college degree.
SPEAKER_04That is so many people's story. So, okay, I was listening to you in another interview. You get the camera and you start searching, you're looking for a voice, you're starting to do everything. Tell me about that first year with the you know, the D60. Were you doing street work? Were you doing portraits? Were you doing you know, flowers and clouds? Tell me about doing everything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was doing everything. I was photographing my cat, my friends. Uh, I was doing a little bit of street, but I was like not really street in a classical understanding, in a classical way, but more of like I took pictures of my city, I was taking pictures of like trying macro, taking pictures of flowers. Then I uh discovered the um this filter that does stars from like light sources, you know, that like cross filter or something. So I was like, oh, that is cool. So I was taking pictures of the city with those like stars uh of the city lights, you know. Then I was like experimenting with different composition when I like I would um take my camera and I would tilt the horizon like 45 degrees, and it was like a diagonal like perspective, and I thought that was cool. Uh so yeah, I was doing all sorts of things.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so you you had an early leaning towards the the more creative side of photography, yeah. Okay, yep. You know, and and trying to find something else uh in the image. You you talk about meeting a model and doing a photo shoot and as sort of a sea change.
SPEAKER_03Yes, so I never really saw like the first year of after I got my first Dislar camera, Nike on the 60, I never really saw myself photographing people because all I saw, like you know, like traditional portraits online, and I was like, nah, I don't I don't know. Like I'm not a people person, so I'm like, I I don't know, I'm not very interested in that. But then I was reached out by this model. Um, she's not really a model, she's just you know, uh like an amateur model hobbyist who she was really pretty and she has a lot of like props at home. So she reached out to me and said, like, hey, let's do this photo shoot. And she was also like doing a little bit of like film photography on her film camera, just you know, having fun. And she was like, Let's do a photography, like a photo shoot together. Uh, and it was like super cheesy on the railroad type of photo session, you know, the the one of those when you go like on the railroad and um she was wearing heels, and we had like a little vintage um telephone for some reason on the railroad. Don't ask me why, but uh makes sense to me. Right, right. Um, yeah, she was like wearing pumps with high heels. Anyway, um, and I was also like, I remember I had my cross filter and I had this like stars out of reflection in her sunglasses. That was cool. Anyway, it was super fun. It was super fun. Uh I still think those nice pictures. I they were they were not terrible, even considering it was like super cheesy on railroad. But like composition-wise and color-wise, they were nice. I I'm not ashamed of those. And that's how I was like I got interested in portraiture. So I was like, oh hmm, that that's actually fun. And that's how I started taking portraits of uh my friends and people I know. But yeah, I was always leaning towards more creative side of photography. I was always thinking like how I can make it interesting and more storytelling. So again, I started experimenting with composition, like tilting my camera, and some of my early portraits had this like tilted 45-degree composition. Then there was a trend of doing like lens flares on digital uh photo photographs, you know, like lens flares from Phil Photographs. So I was doing that. So yeah, I was like experimenting with different styles.
SPEAKER_04Well, tell me about the relation. You use my favorite word of all time for photographing, that's storytelling. Tell me what you were reaching for in not in terms of composition so much, but maybe using composition to reach story. What were you looking for?
SPEAKER_03I was um maybe not the story specifically, but I wanted to create this kind of like magical and whimsical atmosphere, you know, like like the tilted um horizon, tilted um perspective also felt like felt different, felt felt felt uh felt different, felt um not ordinary. So that was I was looking for. I was looking for something not ordinary, not traditional, something different.
SPEAKER_00Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you are enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames, quarterly printed photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new frames magazine subscription. And now, back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_04Looking for your own voice is is you know how you how you've described it. And I think that's absolutely brilliant. But we're we're still, it seems to be a step or two away from getting into the compositing, getting into the you know, the heavy Photoshop stuff. Yeah. But when did you start going down that avenue?
SPEAKER_03So uh first year when I got my digital camera, I was doing like all sorts of things, but then the next second year, I was doing just portraiture, you know, again, experimenting with different techniques, but it was just it was still no compositing involved, just different like editing styles and different uh shooting techniques. But then uh I I don't know what happened again. I was looking, like I it's hard for me to explain because you know, you you don't think about those things, you don't plan them, you just do what it feels what it feels right to you. So um again, like I was looking for something because uh I remember my portrait photography was not getting a lot of attention. It was okay, but it was like you know, nothing special. Um and it really bugged me. Like I wanted to stand out, like I really wanted to stand out, and I really wanted to, you know, prove myself because nobody really believed in me. Like my parents thought that this is not another waste of money. Uh my friends thought it's just another hobby, and uh people in the photography community thought that I'm just a pretty girl with a camera, you know. So I will I wanted to prove them wrong. And also like it felt it felt natural to me. I've always loved, you know, fairy tales, fantasy. I always loved, you know, dream style things, and then I was uh back then there were like a few local photographers that I really liked, and I started to try to analyze what how they do what they do and what makes them different, what people love about it. And also I had didn't have a lot of money, so um I switched to Nikon D80 and I was shooting with like uh the cheapest 50 millimeter lens at the time, and I also was uh shooting with uh um manual lenses, like vintage manual lenses, uh which gave me this like very um unique uh look of like you know, they had like swirly bokeh, soaked focus, and all these like artifacts that you would consider bad. I actually loved them because they made my images more interesting and unique in a way. So then I figure out that you actually can use, I was already using Photoshop for like light retouching, like removing blemishes and things like that. But then I figure out that oh, wait a minute, you can actually use photography, not just you know, taking a picture and taking this frame as it is, and that's it, there's your photography. You can actually take multiple frames and combine them in one in one this like in in this seamless piece of artwork. You can extend your background, you can extend your frame and make it into a square, you can you know add elements from other images, and that's how this photo shoot was like the my first artwork was born. I took an old photo shoot I dig did back in the summer, and there was winter, so I was like sitting at home during winter, you know, you can't really go outside because it's cold. So I took this uh portrait and I extended the background. I extended the background, I make I turned it into a square, and I like stretched it and made it more like a whimsical because I warped the background, and um uh then I took uh I think I swapped the face of the model and I experimented with different like film color filters. I think back then in Photoshop uh there was like NYX software or something. If I don't know if you remember. So yeah, I was playing with those and they had like different film color uh grading effects. So yeah, this is how this uh my first artwork was worn. And I remember I posted it online and it like it blew up. Everybody was like, wow, and yeah, that's when I realized this is what I'm going to do now, and this is like my this is gonna be my style now.
SPEAKER_04And this is this is so cool.
SPEAKER_03And yes, like 30 years later, 13 years later, I'm still doing this.
SPEAKER_04And and very well I might. And I want to get into it to a number of your individual images here in just a second. But you know, listening to you describe this, I mean, anybody can replace a sky, anybody can, you know, do that kind of stuff. Um, but you consciously and intentionally search for, and in your own words here, search for metaphors, search for symbolism. So tell me what drives the kind of compositing that you do.
SPEAKER_03Uh so yeah, the first I started doing compositing, it was just you know, to create this kind of like um interesting, like it was more visual, in visually interesting uh image with like whimsical atmosphere, with like with these special effects of you know warped backgrounds and swapping body parts to make it more you know pretty. To uh I remember I asked I used to ask my model to sway their hat so that I can capture like the flying hair and then later add it to my image to make it look like as if it like was blown by the wind, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_03So first uh at first it was more like visual, but then I again I wanted I wanted to be a little bit more than that. So I started to implement um this little aspect of you know like metaphors and association again to uh make my photography more storytelling, not just you know, a pretty picture with a pretty girl. Yeah, and um I don't know, I I always thought surrealism is a very like interesting and clever way of expressing yourself.
SPEAKER_04Would you describe a lot of your work as surreal?
SPEAKER_03I think so, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I I I often say that I take surrealistic portraits. At least I'd like to think so.
SPEAKER_04No, absolutely. You're absolutely right. Oh, so okay, let's jump in. There's a lot of stuff we got to talk about. There's a book out there, there's a whole climate um climate change awareness project. We're getting to those in just a second. But a couple of the images that seems that a few of the images that seem to come up uh a number of times when people are talking about your work, uh, I'm gonna want to dive in too. Um and then let's start in with one of my favorites because in another part of my life, I'm I'm also a private pilot. Um, you have this wonderful famous shot of the airplane wreck in Iceland, uh, and you holding the paper airplane uh in front of it. Um and you know, those of you that are listening right now, you gotta go to the website, you gotta look at this image. Um but Anya's standing in front of a uh airplane um uh crash, blown out, you know, rusted crash, yeah, uh you know, destroyed airplane fuselage. She's got a great aviators hat on goggles, she's got a scarf flying off in the wind, and she's holding a gargantuan paper airplane. Um tell us the story of this image.
SPEAKER_03Uh okay, so every time, like uh just to be clear, all my locations are real. Like I don't do 99.9% of the time, I don't do background swaps. So I like all my locations are real and most of my props are real. And uh I don't I don't really travel to the sole specific person uh purpose of taking a picture. It's usually I'm on vacation with my husband, or I just go somewhere whatever on business. Uh and I I I love nature, I love uh traveling, I love unique locations all around the world. So every time I travel, I do research because not just to take pictures, but you know, just to experience those places. And sometimes I take an opportunity if I see something really cool and it inspires me, I can create an artwork. So this image is one of those cases, and I saw while I was doing research before the trip, I saw this plane wreckage, which is like a very famous tourist attraction in Iceland. I'm I'm sure everybody saw it on like on Instagram.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03And um, I don't know, I just felt like wow, this is really cool. And instantly I started like you know, brainstorming thinking about what I can photograph over there. And I thought about this kind of like symbolic idea of me standing in front of this plane wreckage in a pilot outfit and holding a paper plane, kind of like symbolizing maybe hope, maybe rebirth, maybe whatever you feel like. Uh so yeah, I I purchased um uh the hat and goggles on Amazon. I created this paper plane at home, and I brought all of this to Iceland. So we hiked to that location. Um there were a lot of people there, like regular tourists and other photographers uh with like you know tripods taking uh landscape photography. Yeah, and it was funny because I remember I um so my husband helped me take this picture, and I usually usually how we do is I take a picture, how I see it, with like composition and angle, and I usually ask him to model for me, and I give him a camera and tell him, like, do exactly the same, but with me in the frame.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03Uh, but I mean he does video, so he knows what he's doing. Um, and it was funny because I remember I was um undressing right there on spot and putting my like leather jacket and my goggles and hat and all the tourists.
SPEAKER_04This is winter time, there's snow on the ground. This is really cold.
SPEAKER_03It was February. I mean, it was not terrible. The wind was the worst, not the temperature. Um, and I remember so I was posing there with this, like, this paper giant paper plane, and my husband take me pictures, and all the tourists and photographers started to line up behind him and taking pictures of me as well.
SPEAKER_02Because I like, I guess I you know did quite a show over there.
SPEAKER_04Um, now you you smoothed out the paper airplane, and there is video of this shoot as well.
SPEAKER_03Yes, there's behind the scenes video on my YouTube. Uh so yeah, obviously I had to transport this paper plane, so it's quite um, you know, um smashed and um yeah, so I had to uh smooth it out in Photoshop and um I had to remove a few people in the background. Um I also uh had I I added the flying scarf because I was throwing it in the air separately as a separate shot. And uh yeah, that's yeah, that's pretty much it. I also did sky replacement a little bit because um the sky was flat without any like clouds. It was pretty boring, so I added um some clouds, and yeah, that's pretty much it.
SPEAKER_04Well, man, I I was feeling for you when I watched the video because the wind was pushing that paper airplane around.
SPEAKER_03And I was also crying because wind was blowing in my eyes. I was like tearing.
SPEAKER_04Oh, it was it's it's a beautiful photo, but you know, the the the cool thing here is that you have said that the very the most important thing is coming up with the storytelling idea. Um, and that in the best case, that precedes everything. And so I'm I'm loving this fact that you know you see this online, you're doing the planning for the trip, you see the wreck, and you think, oh, I've got an idea for a metaphor. Yes. Is that how you work?
SPEAKER_03Pretty much, yes. Uh, I don't always can explain what meaning is behind this, but I just love to play with like metaphors and association, being like there's a strong connection with you know paper plane and an actual plane. So I I thought that was cool.
SPEAKER_04Well, and you know, so many photographers in every genre, you say, you know, what are you taking a picture of? They respond with an emotion. I'm taking a picture of anger, I'm taking a picture of hope, I'm taking a picture of whatever. I mean, I really think that kind of emotion or psychology drives just about all of our work. But to make it the a priori, the upfront driving force uh for conceptual photography is really, really successful. I gotta chuckle about the story you told about another picture, and this is the young woman dragging the moon behind her with some chains. Um, and especially where the moon actually came from. So I mean tell tell us that story. Then we'll move on to do a couple others.
SPEAKER_03So uh that was uh back, so I won Broncala sponsorship, uh that Gen Next Generation, and uh as a part of the program, I got all this cool equipment, and I was also supposed to do like um like different artworks, uh different content as a part of the sponsorship. And um, so I was browning their website online, and I saw this uh light modifier, which is called balloon, which is like a sphere, like plastic sphere. Uh, and it's supposed it's uh designed to photograph interiors to create this three 360-degree light all over the place, and it's a light modifier. You put uh it has a binet, and you put a flash head inside, and you you know, put a strobe in there and you light it, and you light it. But you know, as a creative photographer, I'm like, I'm not gonna shoot interiors with it. Like, I don't really use a lot of artificial light, I'm going to use it as a prop.
SPEAKER_04So I thought that was really cool because it's were they okay with this when you said I'm not actually using your light, I'm taking it before.
SPEAKER_03Of course, yes. So it's it's like it's a perfect sphere. You put a strobe inside it, it lits up, and it's like it's a moon. It's a moon. So I ordered it for like testing for a few days. And yeah, I was like, I'm gonna turn it into a moon. And I got this idea of um, I think I saw a picture, like I always do research. I go to Pinterest and I search for like image references or just any images uh with the moon to get this like juices flow and those ideas popping into my head, like brainstorming. I think I saw a picture of somebody like holding a moon, and I'm like she's not gonna hold it, but she's gonna drag it with a chain, kind of like she's stolen it from the sky, and now she's dragging it across the beach because you know it's heavy, it's a moon. So I got this uh chain on eBay, I think, and it's not real chain, it's like I don't know what it is, but it's super lightweight. It looks real, but it's like a prop, it's super lightweight, and it was perfect, like yeah. Uh so we went to the beach, and um, yeah, I didn't take into consideration that it's usually super windy on the beach. So her hair was all over her face. I had to Photoshop it out to make it decent.
SPEAKER_04Oh uh yeah. This isn't this isn't Coney Island, is it? Is this a is this it is?
SPEAKER_03It is. Oh my word. It is, it's Coney Island Beach.
SPEAKER_04Um yeah, well, this is this is not what most people think of with Coney Island.
SPEAKER_03Well, it was a little bit like on the other side, so there was no people there. So it's not like crowded beach part of Coney Island. It was a little bit anyway. So yeah, and um like yeah, her dress was like pulling flat against her body, which was not attractive. So I'm like, oh my god, I have to like Photoshop it out. Uh but yeah, it turned out cool. I just uh put the um moon texture on top in Photoshop, uh, which worked perfectly. And then um during the photo shoot, my husband and my model they um took their cell phones and turned on the flashlight to imitate those little like moon drops on the ground. Yeah, yep. So I photographed those separately and again edit in Photoshop, kind of like, you know, she's dragging it on the floor so it like little pieces fall off, and yeah.
SPEAKER_04So I I'm really and there's a bunch of other pictures I want to get to. Um, but I'm really intrigued because you have an on-location sensibility and you have a post-production sensibility. Are are they just complementary? Are they the same? Or are are you is it just two completely different mindsets?
SPEAKER_03No, it's all one process. It's all like one yeah. When I think about an artwork, usually I have an idea beforehand, and I oftentimes I do like mood boards and sketches. So I have a very specific picture in my mind about what I'm going to create. And because I've been doing this for so many years and I'm good at Photoshop, I already know what I can do and what I cannot do in Photoshop. I mean, I can pretty much do everything, but it would be much easier and much more realistic if some things are real and photographed right there on the set. So it's all like part of one uh thought process and of like of my uh uh process of creating art. And yeah, I go intentionally on this on the photo shoot thinking about this is a I'm going to photograph and this I'm going to Photoshop later.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Does serendipity play a role in your process at all?
SPEAKER_03Uh uh what, sorry?
SPEAKER_04Chance, surprises, discovery.
SPEAKER_03Uh sure, yeah. Some things go unexpected often, uh, some things go not as you planned. Uh you just have to sometimes improvise and uh just be okay with an idea that maybe the picture that you had in your head not is not going to turn out exactly how you thought it's going to be, and that's fine. Sometimes uh I have to reshoot. It happened to me a couple of times that everything went completely wrong, and I had to reshoot everything. That's fine.
SPEAKER_04That's never happened to any of the rest of us, no. Uh what what about discovery? What about surprise at the computer?
SPEAKER_03Uh it's interesting because for me, being on set and taking pictures is more of um collecting materials for further editing, uh, collecting materials to create to then later create something that I can't capture in camera. So when I take photos and I sometimes show like my models sometimes want to see them on camera, I'm like, this is not any near of what's going to be in the end, because my photographing process might be pre-khaotic. Uh, and I cannot really see the final image until I go home and sit at my computer and edit. And that's where the magic happens for me. This is what I love doing. Is can I be really honest? Yeah, I don't like to photograph.
SPEAKER_04Really?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, no, I don't like going outside, I don't like interacting with people, I don't like putting my makeup on, dragging all my gear all the way to location, being hot, cold, or whatever. And and after that, not seeing the final product. But when I get home, in the comfort of my home with like tea and my cat, I sit in front of my computer, and this is where the magic happens. I start seeing the final image, and this is what like you know makes me happy.
SPEAKER_04Do you play a lot at with Photoshop? Yes, of course. Just to see what I wonder what'll happen if.
SPEAKER_03Yep. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_04We we should tell everyone, by the way, you have a number of videos online where you go through your entire process um of working up photographs. Real really, really cool um videos um you know, for how the magic happens, as you said. Um okay, one more image, then I want to get over to the two and a half second project. Um, but this is the image everyone's got to talk about it, the butterflies in my stomach uh image, um, which you've described a number of times as creepy, and I don't think it is at all. Um I I think it is is a compelling, beautiful image. Um, and I I you know I've learned that blue is your favorite color. The tones you've got in here uh are fantastic. But again, you know, for the people that that are just listening and haven't seen it yet, um try to describe this and not be creepy. Um tell us what tell me tell everybody what we're looking at here.
SPEAKER_03Well, honestly, I don't think that it's creepy either, but when I was creating it, I thought that for like the other people, like the general public, it might be too dark. So some people might call it creepy, but anyway, it's a picture of me, it's a self-portrait of me standing in front of the camera, being somewhat naked and ripping my skin apart, tearing it apart and opening up my stomach. And inside of it, you can see my skeleton and the butterflies inside of it and flying out of my stomach.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's well, okay. And and I mean, you have a top on, you know you've described this, you know. The I I forget where you got the skeleton. Was that from Amazon too?
SPEAKER_03I think it was Starget.
SPEAKER_04Oh, Target, oh highlight.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so yes. So I got a life-sized plastic skeleton in, I think it was Stargate. I photographed it separately with butterflies attached to it, and then I photographed myself. Of course, I wasn't naked, and you you can't really see anything in there. It was like the just parts of the skin. But I photographed myself wearing a nude tank top, and I uh cut the fabric uh in the middle of the tank top, and I would I photographed myself ripping that far far fabric apart. So it was not actual skin, but it was like a fabric as a as a stand-in for the skin.
SPEAKER_04And and how did this idea start?
SPEAKER_03Um well, I don't know exactly, but I remember it was um so I moved to United States in 2014, and it was pretty uh hard. It was really difficult. I was struggling for uh a year or two because you know uh you're so away from home, you're a completely different country, you speak a completely different language, uh, you don't know anybody. I moved here with my husband with only like you know, two bags and and a camera, and that's it. We don't we didn't have any job offers, we didn't have an apartment. Uh you know, I remember I for for the first week we slept on the floor, we didn't even have a mattress, you know. You start from scratch, you start from like zero, you had nothing. I didn't have any friends. Uh it was far far hard for me because you know, the language and mental barrier, uh, it was hard for me to, you know, to connect with people. So it was hard. So I was going for this like very dark time. And I always thought about this phrase of butterflies in my stomach. Uh, because when you say people usually think about you know falling in love. You fall you fall in love and you have this like butterflies in my stomach. But but in reality, you can have butterflies in your stomach every time you're just you know anxious.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03So I I thought it would be really cool to play with this um phrase, uh actually, you know, illustrating it and also use it as a metaphor of me going through this dark period and kind of like accept my inner bugs and go through this rebirth of a new person uh in a new country.
SPEAKER_04It it is that rebirth. That's exactly what I saw the first time I saw the image. Um, and and the look on your face is not one of fear or sadness, it's more contemplative and more uh deep thought. Um and and you know, and these beautiful blue butterflies are flying out of you. It's it's it's really a compelling, wonderful shot.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. I never thought it's gonna be so popular. It was a big surprise for me, honestly, because again, I thought it's gonna be way too dark. Uh usually people don't like dark things, so I never thought it's gonna be this popular.
SPEAKER_04Uh well, you know, okay, let me twist dark just a little bit there, because I mean, you just in terms of the tone, you know, it's dark blues and indigos and stuff like that. And you've said that blue is your favorite color, but and and you use blue a lot. Is that a part of your composition? You know, when you when you set out to do something, are you already thinking in blue tones?
SPEAKER_03I think so, yeah. And uh you can often see uh blue in yellow uh in my images because it's two complementary colors. And every time I plan my photo shoot, I think about what's going to be the major color. If it's going to be blue, then I'm going to use uh, for example, yellow dress or a yellow prop to complement that color. Or vice versa. Uh I have this image of a girl sitting among yellow flowers, and I specifically chose a blue top for her to wear to again create that complementary color scheme.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and and there is the image of you where you're unzipping skin basically, and you're appearing as a blue, blue person. Um and by the way, the picture of blueberries, you have ruined blueberries for me, by the way.
SPEAKER_02Um sorry.
SPEAKER_04Um but I mean, there's so, so many images I would love to talk about. Um, you know, the the bird's nest in the hair image, the image from the Faroe Islands. Folks, you gotta go to the website and look at these because every single image is worth an hour's conversation um in terms of process and intent and metaphor and all that. Um but as you've said, you know, you've wanted to go beyond um pretty pictures. You've wanted to go beyond, you know, just the normal. And so you've got this really important and cool project going on, uh, the two and a half seconds project. Tell me what that is.
SPEAKER_03So, yes. Um, so I've been doing conceptual photography for many years. And yes, I was always trying, I mean, in the beginning it was visual, then I wanted it to be more uh storytelling to add a little bit more um I don't know, atmosphere and story aspect to it. But then I guess I was evolving as an artist, and I thought, well, I guess it's time for me to bring more meaning to my work, not just to create interesting or compelling images, but because now I have some kind of a platform and audience, and um maybe it's time for me to talk about something that is important to me and use my voice as an artist, as a photographer, to uh bring some awareness and again to talk about important topics that mattered to me. And for me, that was always our planet, uh the environment, the pollution, and everything. Um so yeah, that's how my project was born, and um big influence on the project was me visiting Iceland for the first time back in 2016. Uh, because before that, yes, I loved nature. I traveled a little bit, but not really. Like I like in Ukraine I couldn't really afford to travel, but uh in the United States, after moving to a new country, you also can't really focus on traveling for the first couple of years. But then we decided to go to Iceland and it just blew my mind. Like it was so beautiful, it was so incredible. It was, I don't know, it's it had such a great impact on me. And this country, because it has glaciers, I learned that they are melting because of climate change. Uh it reminded me and made me realize that our nature is so fragile, it all these beautiful things they can disappear. And it has such a great impact on me that I'm like, I have to do something. I mean, as one single person, maybe I cannot do a lot, but at least I can use my uh photography and my artistic voice to talk to my audience and to start this conversation about the things we're doing to our planet because look at it, it's so beautiful. Like we, you know. So, yeah, this is how this um two and a half seconds project was born.
SPEAKER_04Okay, and explain what two and a half seconds means.
SPEAKER_03So, yeah, this is very interesting because I wanted to play uh the uh perspective of the numbers and create this effect. So if we take the Earth's existence, which is four and a half billion years old, and the humanity, the modern humanity have existed uh for a thousand and forty well no for one hundred and forty thousand years old. So if you take the earth's existence and compress it into two 24 hours, humanity have been on this planet for two and a half seconds, literally. We've been on this planet for so little time, and in this such short time, even if we take only the industrialization, uh which have been what like 150 years now, 200 years, even shorter than that, just a fraction of a second. And in this time, we've created this, you know, we've destroyed this beautiful planet, our home, our only home that we have. We, you know, we created like we've polluted air, we've polluted water, we've created so much garbage, we've destroyed ecosystems, uh, animal extinction, all those things. And yeah, I thought it was a really cool name for this project to give this perspective for people to people.
SPEAKER_04It is. And you have it divided into sections. You've got global warming, you've got sea level rise, uh, greenhouse gases, what is it, deforestation, uh pollution, and and each of these have their own series of images within them.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So the idea of this project is to create a series of images, and each of those images, uh sometimes there's two images in this like little mini series, but each image uh represents and illustrates a specific environmental issue. And I used uh uh landscapes, models, uh, subjects, symbolism, and metaphors to represent each environmental issue.
SPEAKER_04I I love the fact that the ethics, the ideas, the symbolism comes first. Um and then you go out and you say, I've got an argument to make. Let me find the elements to make it. Um we should tell you probably the the you know the the front page issue or front page image for this whole project is you holding the melting globe in your hands. Um so tell us the story of that picture.
SPEAKER_03Uh so this idea isn't new. You can find a lot of images of melting planet on online, but I thought um this is like a very um like a the best representation about what I'm what I would like to say. And I wanted it to be a self-portrait specifically because I want it to be more personal, me being uh in frame, kind of like me speaking to the audience and me holding this planet and telling them, hey, look, look what we've done. And yeah, it's a portrait, it's a self-portrait of me holding a melting planet. And melting planet represents the global temperature rise, and because of that, you know, all the oceans and uh continents are melting and sliding down and dripping all over my fingers.
SPEAKER_04It it's a completely moving, wonderful, wonderful image. Um we should tell everyone, they're gonna find out you know, when they get to the webpage here. Um, you got a book out there, you know, again, with the expert photography folks, you know, the creative portrait concepts. You lecture, you give workshops, you do one-on-one stuff. Um, so I mean, you're being real generous with your time here. And and this work is magical. I mean, just to use a technical term there, every single bit of it is is absolutely magical, compelling stuff.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_04Um, I I am I'm a fan. I am deeply envious that I'm a fan. And and well, thank you. This has been a magnificent conversation. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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