Irina Lozovaya
It was October 2024, I was in London and enjoying an unusually warm evening, doing that thing we do, scrolling through images on Instagram. I saw a photo that just made me stop. It was of a woman, facing away from the camera and almost sitting on a rocky, autumnal surface. The composition was beautiful, but it was evident that the subject was the focus. Anyone can sit on a rock, but she owned the rock, not through a demonstration of force. It was the opposite, a casual indifference, she was listening or interpreting.
There is an art, a rare art that allows someone to do this and I always appreciate it. The images one creates are important, but I think its the person who understands ‘how to connect’ that is what intrigues me the most. I have been fortunate enough to meet a number of incredibly talented people who do this and I wanted to congratulate another. So that evening I sent a DM to Irina, just to let her know that I thought that image was stunning. Her reply was surprisingly swift. Seven months later and we met face to face in France. This is that story.
The full blog post of this trip is here and scroll to the bottom for the BTS shots. Including the ones of Irina photographing Claire (aka Rebirthofthebird) in our chateau.
Perhaps the thing I enjoy most about working with an art model is the ability to have an idea, a seemingly crazy idea, but rather than be shut down, have that person latch on to it and claim for their own. These stones were heavy concrete and arranged in a line in descending order of size to separate an area of lawn outside our chateau. I’m sure they had a more practical purpose but for me, on this dewy morning they were going to be another canvas for Irina to create in. I arranged them in a circle under the most shaded spot of a big tree as the light was getting rather hard and found a chair to stand on so I could capture her from above.
With the scene set, Irina didn’t need any direction, her natural ability to connect with her surroundings came to life and these simple and yet evocative images were born. I have printed several of these now, as once again I find myself drawn to a project I’m now calling Body & Soul that Irina naturally inhabits.
We are so used to witnessing human emotion expressed through a facial expression, but what if you could say the same words with a simple hand gesture? Irina is someone who is deeply rooted in her own self, her body is her canvas and she can say a million things with just her fingers. As we took these I had joked that I just needed to create a stage for her to be able to express herself. She would contort herself into shapes that represented the words of a script only she was reading and at every page turn her hands would be the physical plot twist.
To underscore this very point her left shoulder has a tattoo of two hands twisted together. I took these photos of her hands on her back to personify that point and when I printed the first few images I realised how connected she must have been in that moment. I asked Irina the meaning behind her tattoo and she told me this: “These are my hands. Stefan Beutler was the first photographer who told me that I have beautiful hands and that they express their own emotions. So, I decided to get a tattoo based on one of his pictures [of my hands].”
