Denzil Patrick - Presentation during London Fashion Week SS 24 September 2023

Just another time I had an opportunity to shoot a backstage during the Fashion Week. I truly love these feverish preparations and witnessing models’ metamorphosis.

This time I had a pleasure to participate in DenzilPatrick presentation, organized together with Tank Magazine .

I wish all shootings had such a pleasant atmosphere!

Models: MenaceModels

Hair: Christopher Gatt

Mua: Samanta Falcone

Backstage:

Presentation:

Valette Studio - Presentation - Paris Fashion Week SS 23/24

Participation in Paris Fashion Week is always a great distinction and I’m happy that I could again shoot the presentation of Valette Studio, the fine art masculine brand created by Pierre François Valette.

The presentation took place in Palais Tokyo and was organized within Paris Sphere, a special Fashion Week showroom supporting young, creative talents.

I need to admit that what interest me the most during fashion shows, is everything what happens between the official scenes. An official outcome is spectacular, of course; but all emotions in between, tension, relief, expectations, impatience, stress, breathe, models walking between average humans, this is something magical. And again I realized that B&W shows it better than photos in color.

That’s what I was able to catch:

'Les Amants' (2022) exhibited during 'Amours IV' in Galerie Plateforme Paris

I'm happy to share that my photo 'Les Amants' (Pqris, 2022) became the part of the exhibition 'Amours IV' from the cycle ‘Salo’ to be seen in Plateforme Paris between 20/01-5/02

Thank you dear V&J who are the heroes of this story and the Curator Quenehen Laurent who has chosen my photo among overwhelming amount of works he received to be possibly exhibited during this event.

For the sale & more info, please contact me directly.

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Noir et Blanc sur RC Satiné Photo

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At the vernissage

'Shocking! The surreal worlds of Elsa Schiapparelli' in Musée des Arts Décoratifs

Yesterday was the last day of amazing exhibition 'Shocking! The surreal worlds of Elsa Schiaparelli' taking place in Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

What a visual feast and such an inspiring persona!

I had some little knowledge & imagination about the Schiaparelli house, but I had no idea that the person who stayed behind that all, meaning Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) was such a multitalented, charismatic and creative artist and business woman, what's especially impressive in the times when women still weren't fully considered as citizens (*French women received voting rights in 1944!). Her maison de la mode gathered artists like - obviously? - her lifetime friend Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Meret Oppenheim, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti; she dressed Marlena Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Mae West and others.

(*I'm a kind of fan of Leonor Fini, I was nicely surprised that she designed a bottle of perfume 'Shocking!' in 1937; the same or similar bottle design was taken later by Jean Paul Gaultier, but I don't know the story in details)

The maison was closed in 1954 and re-opened in 2012 thanks to Christian Lacroix, but it's getting the current shape thanks to Daniel Roseberry, creative director since 2019. Interesting fact - before Daniel entered NY Fashion Institution of Technology, he was travelling the world as a Christian missionary. No judgements (!), but it's so great that he has found his way in the fashion design, such a visual imagination happens once in a million.

The exposition was a mix of art works from the epoque and contemporary Schiaparelli masterpieces (by D. Roseberry).

The quality of images stays away from perfection :) I’m sharing just my photo sketches, as I find the whole story really interesting. Enjoy!

The New Yorker 'Mother of Invention' by Judith Thurman

The sweaters coming from the first collection presented by Schiaparelli in Paris at the end of twenties (1927? - 28? I don’t remember well!). I admit that they remind me a bit these cute sweaters done by my grandma when I was a kid ;-) but back then Elsa was immediately recognized as the rising fashion star.

Valette Studio - Paris Fashion Week Menswear 17th January 2023, Fall Winter 2023-24

After a long break in (photo)blogging caused by lockdowns-related & others, I’d like to come back to this activity together with the new upcoming projects and ideas.

I’d like to start from sharing some photos from the fashion show I had a pleasure to participate in, which was a fall-winter 2023-24 collection of Pierre-François Valette, creator of Valette Studio , whose collections have been highlighted since 2020 during Parisian Fashion Weeks.

I’m sharing few looks from the presentation itself, being aware that my equipment, although very nice, still coulnd’t give us these nice, Vogue'-like, runway results and vibes. I’m much more satisfied with backstage photos, in bw below.

Enjoy!

Collection

Backstage

Chopin Nocturnes

Melancholic, candid, delicate, sublime, mysterious, fragile, expressive, longing for a place impossible to find

Chopin nocturnes - Polish landscapes - played by Rubinstein

I grew up literally few kilometers from the place where Chopin was born and spent first seven years of his life. When my parents bought the first CD player, in the early nineties, they got also three CDs - with music of Chopin, John Lennon and Ewa Demarczyk (sung poetry).

Our paths cross permanently, both in my professional and personal life. And whenever I hear or listen to his music, I do have beautiful Mazovian landscapes in my mind. And I miss them now too. Visual poetry. The piercing scent of wet ground and decaying grasses. Silence. Unspoken prayers. Drops of water trapped in spider’s web. Fogg.

Quarantine Still Lifes

Although I’m 100% introvert, what I enjoy the most, is taking photos of people. I take these photos following my own rules and one of the basic is ‘trying to stay invisible’. I observe and take visual notes or create a full image.

But despite that my brain permanently oscillates around photography. I think in images and about images all the time and try to move them out of my brain using camera. Mostly a phone camera, which is not a good quality one, as I’m not a gadget person. It’s more like drawing a sketch of how I perceive the reality surrounding me.

Obviously during quarantine my contact with other people was and is remains limited, what has resulted in shooting small series of still lifes, created by using mostly everyday objects: books, flowers, plant-based food and bottles of wine. That perfectly represents what are mine small pleasures ;-)

Life with Migraine

1960 No.14

This text isn’t clearly dedicated to photography, but describes certain quite serious health phenomenon which has a strong influence on me as a photographer and my general functioning as a person. I also would like to highlight that I’m writing about personal experience, which is totally different for each patient. 

Migraine remains one of those secret illnesses, which were described in the ancient times already, but still remain undeveloped and unsolved. Sometimes I think that the myth about the birth of Athena, the Greek goddess of knowledge who was born from the Zeus’ headaches, is the story of migraine. The list of famous sufferers (including Julius Caesar, Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf…) can lift up one’s ego, but as long as scientists haven’t found the real link between suffering from migraines and being an outstanding genius at the particular field, I wouldn’t go this way too far. However, I always like to have something in common with Virginia Woolf ;-)  

On the beginning I would like to separate ‘headache’ from ‘migraine’. Headache is just a pain felt in some areas of head. Migraine involves a strong headache, but it gives also a complex of different symptomes, especially a migraine with aura (here, my case), which is much more complex neurological phenomenon.

White center 1950

Beginnings

I started to suffer from serious headaches when I was maybe twelve, on the beginning of lower-secondary school, but it could be earlier. I cannot point out the moment when these strong headaches turned into migraines with aura, but for sure it happened during my teenage years. My mother sometimes suffers from strong headaches, she says that quite rarely they turn into migraines; her sister claims that she has experienced migraines only few times in her life. Their blessed memory mother was a serious headache and migraine sufferer and I remember she was taking few basic headache pills every day to prevent possible attacks. The family legend says that her mother has experienced extreme migraines which disappeared only during her pregnancies (what is probably connected with the level of hormones).  

(My) Triggers 

• weather and atmospheric pressure changes (I might feel them even 2 days before anything might be seen…); 

• problems with insulin level regulation; when the sugar level in my blood has too much fun and jumps, it will probably end badly; 

• they are sometimes connected with my cycle;

• stress (stress, stress. In the most extreme period of my life, I was out of life 2-3 days per a week) 

Usually I got some signals before attack itself, sometimes even one or two days before. On the beginning I might feel nausea, restlessness and have some difficulties with focusing on particular thing. Sometimes few hours before the attack itself I might see everything in a slow motion, light and sounds give me pain, I might have difficulties with speaking. I simply know it’s the time to go to bed and possibly cancel plans, hoping that people around will understand. 

Untitled 1968

The attack

When I stay in silence and darkness, mostly I fall asleep, however, this kind of sleep is absolutely different than a ‘normal’ sleep. Despite of pain itself, which sometimes appears just in one point of my skull, sometimes takes both sides of head,  I might experience some states of ‘losing consciousness’; I close my eyes ‘for 5 minutes’ and open it 4 hours later to see all unanswered emails and messages. In a meanwhile I don’t hear phone calls or emails and everything is like over glass. I’m extremely weak, I feel nausea and quite often I sweat like I’d have a fever. At the same time I experience very strong dreams, I joke that some people take lsd to experience visions, I don’t need that. Before one doctor prescribed me naratriptan for the first time (this one from the group of triptans work the best for me), I’ve been taking horse amounts of prescribed painkillers. Such attack might be relatively short and light, let’s say few hours (up half a day) or in extreme cases up to 48 hours (happened once in my life). 

Untitled 1967

After attack     

This is going to be the weirdest part. Be ready ;-) 

The pain is over, but not only. The areas on my head, where I felt migraine pain (‘inside’ my head), become like painful bruises, so I can compare it tho the feeling as someone would hit me using a heavy tool. I might feel the pain of bones on my face or a pain of my skull as well, but I might compare this kind of pain to the feeling experienced after being hit physically. What concerns non physical symptoms, I’d describe it as a state of an absolute clarity of mind, my thoughts become as clear as the air after the serious storm. Quite often I experience high creativity or I find the answers for issues that have bothered me since certain time or I feel I’m ready to make decisions which took me days or weeks. Also it’s the moment when I experience very high sensuality, I have the feeling that I see much more colors than usually and they’re sharpened, also my skin is much more sensitive than usual. And, last but not least, I’m very, very physically tired. After taking a long shower, using delicate perfumes and making myself again looking as an useful member of society, I usually stay up few hours and I need to go again to bed to have a rest, cause I feel physically exhausted. 

Untitled

Summarize

For someone who doesn’t experience migraines, that’s all can sound at least scary and personally I admit that regardless of all disadvantages connected with suffering and cancelling life, in a certain way it’s fascinating what happens with my body and brain. 

Migraines are one of the reasons why I need to work according to my own clock and sometimes I just have to cancel life and stay in bed. I can do and I try to do many things to avoid possible attacks, but sometimes it’s impossible; I simply need to stay in silence and darkness, otherwise I suffer more than needed and I’m useless for my surrounding anyway. 

But it’s just the part of me and I simply believe it’s better to talk about and share awareness, cause it’s much more than ‘just a headache’. 

Rothko Chapel (Houston, Texas)

*PS. Rothko is one of my favourite painters; one of my life plans was writing PhD in Israel dedicated to his works. I was accepted for a program, I got scholarship… but it seemed that there was a different plan for my life. Anyway, I felt that his works of art are the best to visualize a bit this text.

Baltic Sea in November

… and andante from the piano concerto no 21 by Mozart.

I’m totally a beach person, but only under the one circumstance: the place has to be empty. When I was studying and having my internship in St Petersburg 2012/13, I loved to walk along the ‘sea side’, I mean, the Gulf of Finland. It was one of these (rare, I think…) times in my life when I was sharing living space with others, including sharing bedroom with a crazy catholic girl who has never smiled. In the second room we had a cute, Danish party girl (my human there) and a Chinese one without name, but with many Chinese friends. The didn’t speak any language despite of Chinese and ate a lot of chicken and rice, exactly in such order. For an introvert it might be a nightmare.

It was fall/winter time and the beach was absolutely empty. Maybe I should have been afraid of sth, I don’t know. But it was the place where I could breathe. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist anymore and these months were the last months before a kind of new-urban space has been built in this area. (Vasilyevsky Ostrov).

Another totally empty beach was the one in the Severodvinsk, White Sea, the north of the European part of Russia, which is probably one of the weirdest places I’ve ever visited.

Cuban beach on the Gulf of Mexico (2016), empty and silent, far away from typical tourist spots, is literally a heaven and one of the proofs for Gd’s existence.

I have no idea how many times I’ve walked along the beach(es) in Tel Aviv. Usually I do that with a camera or with a bottle of wine (surprisingly, the first one happens more often). I love this place, as long as tel avivian weirdos leave me alone. No, not these handsome and hot guys who enjoys their afternoon and evenings finally being free after work in one of their three start-ups, only the weirdest people from all the place. I worry they feel sth in common with me. Anyway, in this place sometimes you really need to struggle (or rather run away…) to be left alone.

Coney Island in September, during office/school hours, when the weather is insecure.

And the heroine of today’s story, just the Polish beach located on the Hel Peninsula. I went there in November with my sister and her family. I traveled to the Baltic Sea many times as a kid, but mostly it was during summertime. Going there in November was a wonderful idea. I was supposed to have the test shooting there, but it has been cancelled. Thanks to that I could have this amazing walk.

It was cold, raining, empty and beautiful. I was listening to the waves or to Mozart: andante from the piano concerto no 21. Absolutely beautiful piece of music (btw, it was the final piece from the soundtrack in ‘The Amadeus’ movie, when Salieri finished his story…)

Andante Piano Concerto no21 by Karajan

and photos I took this day.

The Morbid Beauty of the Carmo Convent (Lisbon)

If you want to make G-d laugh, tell him your plans. I have had plans, a lot.

After spending almost all February in bed (I got super sick in NY), I’ve seen some Paris Fashion Week (OFS) 2020 collections and then in March, covid_19 took over the world. I was supposed to start few interesting projects in the mid of March, both personal and commercial, but everything has been postponed for the unknown point in the future. I hope I will be able to work again soon, after the end of lockdown (possibly 11th of May), however, I’m aware that the creative and visual sector won’t be the same as before. But I keep hope for the great things to come!

This forced slowdown became the great opportunity to look again and develop images from the personal archive. Today I’m publishing photos from the place, which perfectly mix the two of my favourites aesthetic ideas: the secretiveness of abandoned places and the spiritual beauty of the Gothic architecture.

The catholic Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel has been built in XIV century and ruined during the sequence of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which was one of the deadliest in the history (killing in Lisbon alone between 10 000 and 100 000 of people…). Of course there are no words to describe such a huge tragedy, but… we need to honestly admit that few natural catastrophes created absolutely unique pieces of art (vide: Pompeii, for example)

I saw this place and I immediately knew, that I would like to come back there again as soon as possible, but not as a tourist anymore. I simply would love to have a professional shooting there and have some ideas or rather a whole scenario in my head… and I hope to share the photos of the realized scenario in few months or years ;-) who knows? But today, just a few postcards:

Dashiel Brahmann, NYFW 2020 'Just Another Cloud'

I was happy and honored to receive the invitation for the fashion - art installation by the young and talented fashion designer Dashiel Brahmann www.dashiel-brahmann.com . The pop-up gallery presenting his newest collection has been located in a little bit hidden, secret space in Soho and I absolutely loved the way as the gallery was organized. Every small piece of space and collection was deeply considered and perfectly played together, creating very coherent vision. I’ve been also impressed how much time and energy has been put into making all hand made Rorschach inspired details.

I hope to see Dash’ works again very soon! :]

Victor Li show NYFW Men's Spring 2020

Getting sick had a bad influence on the quality and speed of my work last days.

I’d like to share few photos from the recent Victor Li show presenting spring collection during New York Fashion Week 2020 (which took place 4th of Feb)

I had a pleasure to shoot in the backstage and participate in the show.

Spéos Alumni 2019

So today I found out video where I speak about my school experience :-)

It seems to be funny to look at it even today, after half a year, I’m curious how it’s going to be received in 5 years. Anyway, that’s a nice souvenir!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qscKyZ8nbVI

Vogue Fashion Festival & Swarovsky

Recently I had a pleasure to participate in the 4th edition of the Vogue Fashion Festival, organized together with Swarovsky. Some of the lectures were truly inspiring! I especially appreciated the talk with Cédric Charbit (Balenciaga), Piergiorgio Del Moro & Samuel Ellis Scheinman (casting directors) and Kim Jones (Dior). I’m sharing some photos from the first day of this event:

Please Have Some Fun - editorial for the Global Fashion Exchange

As a vegan and as a person who grew up with the set of values based on high respect for nature, I’m always happy to participate in projects supporting the idea of sustainability and ecology. I believe that as a fashion photographer, I can promote and highlight the ideas that I believe in. That’s why I was really glad to shoot the fashion editorial ‘Please Have Some Fun’ for The Global Fashion Exchange http://www.globalfashionxchange.org and Pause Fashion Hub https://pausefashionhub.com . We received permission to publish these photos just recently and I’m happy to finally share the results of our work.

@globalfashionexchange

Production: @pausefashionhub

Photographer: @awafijolek

MUA & hair: @katiuscia.pezzulo

Models & stylists: @mihamarkovic & @sustainably_by_emy

dress: @_annamariaangelika_

scarf: @biencollections

skirt: @maria_maurio

blazer: @akoma1260

sweater: @ipsilonparis

necklace & belt: @studio.markovic

shirt: @amalyameira

scarf: @biencollections

green dress: @cass_made

dress 2: @auruhfy

necklace: @jfproject

bag: @aliane.matei

shirt used as scarf: @kindomshop

earrings: @nimzu_

skirt: @maria_maurio

sweater: @ipsilonparis

hat: @studio.markovic

top: @amalyameira

bag: @aliane.matei

Postcards from NY - vol. 1

We all are street photographers, landscape photographers, travel photographers, in a certain way. Some of us just decide to specialize in a particular field or have tendency to catch a particular kind of images. I can’t a v o i d street photography; however, it’s a pity that my eyes can’t take a photos, my images would be much better.

Personally, I take photos all the time; I take photos of my cat (and my cat and my cat once again), food, drinks, wine, flowers, friends, light, architecture; when I’m sitting with friends in cafe or jogging. (To make it clear, I jog definitely too rarely…). It’s my life, my addiction, inner need, which became my profession.

I was simply too bad in other professions.

So today I would like to share some visual impressions from the city which doesn’t sleep. Ok, it’s just Manhattan that doesn’t sleep. Or some parts of Astoria. Or …

Ok. Enjoy.

Ubu Roi

Recently I had a pleasure to shoot clothes designed by Juliette Pétriat, which are costumes for the theatre play ‘Ubu Roi’ by Alfred Jarry. All costumes have been created for female actors, despite of the fact that two represented characters are male (plus third one is the ghost of male character…) . I highly appreciate Juliette’s talent, her strong attention to details, tailoring skills and colorful imagination. All together, I see here true pieces of art and preliminary to haute couture.

Le Spectre

Model: Laura https://laurajullian.book.fr/

Le Roi Venceslas

Model: Odilya Mendy @odilyamendy

Le Capitaine Bordure

Model: Federica Violi https://federica-violi.format.com/

La Reine Rosemonde

Model: Hannah Weidenauer https://hannahw.book.fr/

Thank you for great work!

Graduation with honors from the Spéos International Photography School - Paris & London

22nd of May 2019 I was happy to graduate with honors from the Speos International Photography School. I received prize in the ‘Studio’ category and I’m truly pleased that my hard work has been appreciated.

The main price was the possibility to exhibit my portfolios and works during Les Rencontres d’Arles, https://www.rencontres-arles.com , which is considered one of the most important and meaningful photography festivals and in Europe. My works have been shown in the city center during the special projection night  Spéos Photo Awards Screening-Voies Off and in the art gallery located at 7 Rue de la Liberté.

Unfortunately I couldn’t participate in the festival, but I’m very glad that this way my photos could be seen by wide public.

Photo by Valeria Papp-Quinci