Tell us a little about yourself. How did you become a photographer?
Photography has always been part of my life, but I never took it seriously until December 2018. Two months before that time, I got into the most impactful and hardest depression of my life. I completely lost touch with myself and felt like I was stuck in my body and I don’t belong in this Matrix anymore.
My medicine was the one and only - Berlin. It was December 2018. I did my first shooting with my friends to update their model/actor portfolios. We had a lot of fun during the shooting and it was the first time when I felt like home in Berlin. Two days later, me and another good friend of mine who is a photographer as well, were on our way to Vipassana.
We were in an airport, we had 2 hours of waiting. And exactly in those hours we opened my pictures from that photoshooting and she showed some tricks of how to edit the pictures and bring them a cinematic vibe. I was so amazed by the results. The pictures looked like freezes from the movie. It was my movie which I created with my characters.
After a few days of Vipassana I have already decided to create a portfolio after coming back to reality. That is exactly what I did. Photography brought me back to the game and it was the reason to move to Berlin, create and live my own movie.
Have you always wanted to do art?
Absolutely. In all forms.
You were born and raised in a progressive rock and roll family from Belarus, then you moved to Berlin. Did it affect the choice of profession and the style of your works?
Impact on my professional choice? No. My parents have always supported me in all of my choices. All they want for me is to be happy.
Affecting the style of my work? Definitely yes!
My parents listen to rock music. Bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Guns’n’Roses and all those old school hard rock and heavy metal bands have always been playing in the background. So I was literally forced to listen to hard rock music since I was born.
Attending music school to learn piano and being surrounded by only musician and other artist friends made music my main catalyst of inspiration to create since my teenage years. My music taste has been evolving every year and continues to impact my art a lot. As a result, my favorite clients are musicians who bring unlimitless inspiration into my life.
I'm very grateful to my amazing parents who raised me in freedom and trust. This freedom is broadcasted through my art.
Tell us a little about the shooting process. How do you build relationships with models? What problems do you face during shooting?
I’m open with people and it makes them feel comfortable with me. I build a connection and create a safe space where my models can be themselves and we can make the best of our shootings. The only problems which ever happened were technical, but the solutions always were found.
You studied drawing and painting, graphic design and computer graphics. You know what composition is. Do you break the compositional rules if you see that the shot turned out to be strong in energy?
Art is a space where there are no rules.
The collection ‘Incessant Insomnia’. Tell us a little about the history of the creation of this series of works.
‘Incessant Insomnia’ is a glimpse into Berlin’s underground nightlife during the lockdown.
It’s all about love, pleasure, expression and connection.
This project is about Berlin's nightlife during quarantine. There is love, passion, self-expression and connection, creative and underground beauty. Tell me how this project affected you. What kind of emotional feedback did you get from the people who participated in the shooting? What have you learned from this project?
I must say that lockdown times were one of my favorite times in my entire life. I feel like I had a chance to meet the soul of Berlin and make love with it. It was a very special time when Berliners became a family and they built a new level of underground reality where only love existed and nothing else. I literally felt that I’m capturing historical moments of real Berlin in a very unique time for the Whole World. It’s pure freedom in a cage. You can lock the city, but you cannot lock down love, passion, expression and connection. These emotions speak for themself on the faces of all the people who are captured in the moment in these photographs.
Berlin always remains Berlin.
Is there any message in your works? What thoughts should they evoke in the viewer’s mind? What is the «July Space» photographer trying to tell us in her works?
It’s an invitation to explore dark spiritually and seize the creative and underground beauty.
What lesson have you learned while working as a photographer?
To go to each shooting with the intention of creating a masterpiece like I always do, but even better than the one before. Self confidence always works.
Tell us about the creative plans in the future?
I have other projects that I’m planning to exhibit. At the moment I am taking a break from Berlin and hiding myself for a few months in one peaceful island somewhere on the Spanish coast. I’m coming back to the roots and starting to draw and paint by hand again here. Lets see how this transformation will impact me and what I’m gonna do next after coming back to the intoxicating love of my life - Berlin.
Text by Lyubov Melnickowa @lumenicka