My writers, my sisters, my guides. Not that I do not appreciate men, but there's an indescribable feeling writing about women and talking to them. I couldn't name a better mentor figure in my life than Lena Karenina, who, in my eyes, is the epitome of the powerful woman. She is also someone who very naturally explores the multi-dimensional female role in the atmosphere of domesticity and god knows how touches my soul by the effortless earthy, bodily documentation of their makings - spaces, life around them and the life they give birth to (you can find her work on Instagram and Facebook).
Let me say this, I had met people with the sparkling eyes before, but never with so much fire in them. Think they call it charisma, but the energy I get by talking to Elena can be best described as witnessing a forest catching fire and not knowing what to do at that moment. It's a feeling of deep intimidation simultaneously being deftly manipulated and taken a prison by the mesmerising view that one doesn't get to see often in his life. I would probably feel like standing aside and painting it.
To give you a brief pre-story, Lena and me were both fellow waitresses getting our hands dirty by pulling tap handles behind the bar back in St Albans. Four years later or so, we are getting our hands dirty by storming around the built-in basement studio in Lena's home, making sense of the camera buttons, diving in the bags of garments, looking for something that would fall into the realm of the abstract and simple but very talkative photography that happened to be Lena's post-birth hobby and now a profession. So the precious garments, something that holds a perfect balance of vibrancy and emptiness in them. As if asking patterns to have prints on them that do not do its most important function - capturing the eye. The key lies in the eyes, movement. They do all the job, she told me. And so does the nakedness.
Bodies are beautiful (Lena very beautifully described bodies as maps, remembering the acne on one of her model's backs and referring to my break outs on face). That really grounded me once again. Besides being a soul, sometimes I am more of a body. With its own curvy, uneven lines that reminds me of the rivers, acne spots and scratches can be my lakes and hills, hair and the rest - my dear forests and fields. Taking your eye through its idyllic stories. For today's shoot I was turning more abstract and simple, feeling how the undressed body slowly aligned with the naked, unwinged, unformed ego, giving way for my true beautiful nature to sneak out of its shell.
