I am who I am

      First of all I am grateful to my parents that influenced me. My parents are both architects, and my mother also a fashion designer and dressmaker. She cultivated a deep appreciation for art and design in a variety of ways in my views. I enjoyed the paintings of every style whose finer attributes she would explain in careful detail. Each summer since I was ten years old, I spent traveling abroad, visiting Spain, Malta, Britain, Poland, & France. In these countries I saw works of art in museums and galleries and took many photos to commemorate my experiences. My mother encouraged my interest in photography early on with her complimentary remarks about the photos I brought back home from my trips.
     My first photographs, taken with an inexpensive and simple camera, were also naive and lacking in most respects. Though I didn’t understand much about what I was doing at the time, I loved to experiment with different techniques, image qualities and artifacts that different cameras could impart to my photographs. I will never forget the first time my friends commented enthusiastically on my photographs. I was 14 years old at a summer camp in Crimea. It was the effect my photographs had upon my friends that summer that first clearly revealed to me the power of photography. It was around this time my mother began to open my eyes to the world of cinema, especially with black and white classics from all over the world. I was struck by the depth of emotion that could be expressed with compositions in this visual medium. I have become consciously aware that I had captured in the images of my friends and the environment at summer camp much more than just a moment in time and the tangible elements present in the frame.
     My experimentation in the visual arts broadened as I became more interested in clothing, makeup and hairdressing. I begged my mother to send me to private makeup artistry classes. She eventually agreed and with my new skills and knowledge applied my own avaunt-garde makeup and hairstyles and on many occasions photographed the results. I asked my mother to model some of her latest clothing designs and allow me to do a fashion shoot. Soon after I conducted several paid fashion shoots with clients who aspired to careers in modeling. I provided the artistic direction, backdrops, did all the model’s makeup, hair, selection of clothing, accessories, and lighting, using a mid range digital camera, taking over 900 photos during a 10 hour photo session.
As time passed and both my skills as a photographer and my passion for photography grew, I came to realize I want to make photography my life’s work. I discovered the passion of colors, intensity, focus and application of a wide range of techniques and effects. After all life is a passion by itself.