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I Love Your Stories is a soulful conversation series hosted by artist and creative guide Hava Gurevich, where art meets authenticity. Each episode invites you into an intimate dialogue with artists, makers, and visionaries who are courageously crafting lives rooted in creativity, purpose, and self-expression.
From painters and poets to healers and community builders, these are the stories behind the work—the moments of doubt, discovery, grief, joy, and transformation. Through honest, heart-centred conversations, Hava explores how creativity can be both a healing force and a path to personal truth.
If you’re an artist, a dreamer, or someone drawn to a more intuitive and intentional way of living, this podcast will remind you that your story matters—and that the act of creating is a sacred, revolutionary act.
[MUSIC]
What happens when you follow your
creative vision before
you know where it will lead?
Welcome to this episode
of All of Your Stories.
I'm your host, Hava Gurvic, and today I'm
joined by
Ukrainian-born conceptual portrait
artist, Anya Aunty, who moved to New York
with her husband, two
suitcases, and no plan,
just a dream.
Known for her surreal, meticulously
crafted portraits of
women, Anya shares how she found
her artistic niche and the self-portrait
that went viral during
one of her darkest moments,
and how she brings her fantastic vision
to life through
costumes, props, on-location
shoots, and hours of digital compositing.
Join us as we go behind the scenes of her
creative process, the
power of trusting your
voice, and how she's navigating the rise
of AI-generated art
that may mimic the look,
but not the heart, of her work.
Welcome to the podcast, Anya.
Now quick word from our sponsor, and then
we'll get right back to the show.
When I started selling my art, I had
absolutely no idea how to
actually turn it into a business,
a professional business.
And then I came across art storefronts,
and that was a game changer.
I've been a customer now for years, and
they've been instrumental
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I have a gorgeous,
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I have marketing tools and a membership
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me how to succeed as an artist.
Check them out, artstorefronts.com, and
tell them how I sent you.
So Anya, welcome, and thank
you for being on my podcast.
Yes.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for having me.
And I'd like to start by maybe you can
just tell us a little
bit about your background
and how you got to photography, whatever
you feel comfortable sharing.
Well, I've always been a creative kid.
I was always good in paintings and
drawings and all sorts of crafts.
But unfortunately, I've never went to an
art school, even though
I wanted to, but it was
kind of expensive.
I couldn't afford it.
I had just a little bit of classes in my
high school, like
ethnic kind of painting.
That's it.
But I was always like this creative
person, and I needed my creative outlet.
And that's when photography, digital
photography became a big thing.
I discovered it for
myself, and I fell in love.
And also, about the same time, I started
to explore Photoshop
because I was still in college.
And I was figuring out
what to do with my life.
And again, because I was a creative kid,
I wanted to do
something more creative with
my career.
So I was exploring, maybe becoming like a
digital, not a designer,
but like a web designer
maybe, or something to do with design,
like illustration maybe.
So I started to learn
Photoshop and Illustrator.
So for me, Photoshop even
came earlier than photography.
I started learning Photoshop even before
I got into photography.
I already had a digital camera, but like
a little one back in
the day when everybody
had it.
It was around 2008.
So I started to learn how to remove
pimples and dark circles
under eyes to just make
my home photos more pretty, how to
increase contrast and
maybe boost saturation just to
make my photographs a
little bit prettier.
So yeah, and that's when
I discovered photography.
Around 2009, I got my first DSLR camera
with all of my savings.
It was like $400.
So yeah, I've been doing photography for,
oh my god, 15 years now, I guess.
Like everybody else, I
started, I didn't know what to do.
I just photographed everything around me,
like my friends, city landscapes.
I was experimenting with different
genres, but what I was
pretty certain of that I wanted
to create something that was different
than everybody else.
So that's why I started to experiment a
long way, not just learn
how to take pictures and
work with my camera, but also how to
enhance them with
editing, with post-production.
So you know, Photoshop.
Let me, before, just kind of back up.
So a little bit about your background.
So where are you from and when, where
were you when you
started doing photography and
where are you now?
I'm originally from Ukraine, so that's
where I started and
spent the first years of my
career.
But in 2014, I moved to United States and
it was a big pivotal
moment for me, not just
in terms of career, but just life,
because it was just me,
my husband, we didn't have
any friends, no family,
everybody's back there.
Still most of our families
are still back in Ukraine.
So it was just two of us and we only had
like two suitcases of
stuff and my camera bag and
that's it and my laptop and that's it.
Did you have some destination or some job
or something that you were coming to?
No, nothing.
So basically I won green card lottery.
Yes, and we just decided to take a sleep
and to move across the
ocean to a completely new
country.
It was, I think it was my husband's first
time abroad, like at all.
It was my first time living by myself.
So we didn't have any job offers, no
opportunities, no, we
didn't have an apartment.
So the first week we lived with a friend
that I never met
before, we only met online.
So that was a little scary, like coming
to some of these places,
some of these apartments
on the Upper East Side,
having no idea what to expect.
So we slept on the mattress on
the floor for the first week.
We only got our first apartment.
And it was also quite challenging because
you probably know you
have, in order to rent
an apartment in the United States, you
have to have like a tax
return and credit score.
We didn't have any of that obviously.
So we had to pay three months deposit for
the first apartment.
We got it back, luckily, but it was all
like, wow, because it was not just
completely life-changing.
It was also really hard.
It was very non-difficult.
Did you both speak English when you came?
Yes, we spoke.
I spoke a lot of American and my husband,
but I've been
studying English since I was
six, and I've had a private tutor and
English was like a
mandatory class in my high school.
But still, it's completely different when
you learn language
back in another country
and you only speak it in class.
It's like completely different when you
land in a country when
suddenly everybody speaks
around you and you struggle to understand
all the accents and
all the slang words and
all the phrases that
you've never heard before.
It was really hard.
And also psychologically, it was really
hard to speak for some
reason because hearing and
understanding is so much different than
speaking because you struggle.
You understand everything, but you
struggle to find words.
And you get really
self-conscious about pronouncing.
Exactly.
But yeah, psychologically, it's hard to
go outside your comfort zone.
It very much improved because it's been
like 11 years now, but
for the first couple of
years, it was very difficult.
So you were already doing photography and
so you were already
playing with Photoshop.
You focus on portraiture and it's
primarily women and it's a kind of
surreal fantasy kind
of portraiture.
It's not just your
regular straight photography.
And I say surreal
because you play with scale.
You play with metaphors.
Metaphors?
Metaphors. Metaphors.
Metaphors.
Yes, there's always a story.
It always feels like
a still from a movie.
Some kind of surreal
like Alice in Wonderland.
I love it.
And very, very strong colors.
Your palette, there's a lot of blue.
And then you use color very selectively
and very intentionally.
And they're stunning.
They're stunning photographs.
How did you...
Thank you so much.
How did you get there?
And also, if you want to talk about your
first break, your first big break.
Well that's exactly what it is.
You're absolutely right.
I describe myself as a
serious conceptual photographer.
So I specialize in female portraiture.
It's not because I'm against men.
It's just that I like to think about my
subjects as my alter-ingos.
So I gravitate
towards female photography.
But yeah, how I got into the genre.
So like I mentioned
earlier, I got into photography.
It was around 2009.
That's when I first
got my first DSLR camera.
And for the first year and a half, maybe,
I was like, you know,
I'm still finding myself
trying to figure out even
if I like photography at all.
I was not shooting that much.
I was like trying different genres.
They're trying different things.
For some reason, I wasn't into
portraiture like at all at first.
I was like, I don't
want to photograph people.
Maybe because everybody were
photographing people.
And like I said, I wanted to do something
that would be different from everybody.
I wanted to be different
because I was always an outsider.
I wanted to be different.
So I was like, no, I'm
not going to do portraiture.
But then I met a girl
that we later became friends.
And she wasn't like a model, not in a
professional way, but
she was like a hobby.
She just liked to take pictures.
And she reached out to me and she said
like, well, you know, I
have a lot of cute outfits.
I have some props.
Let's do a photoshoot together.
I'm like, sure, why not?
Oh my God, it was so cliche.
We went to the rail station, of course,
and we took some
pictures on the railroads.
She was wearing a vintage
outfit with high heel pumps.
Don't ask me why we wear on the rails.
It was also vintage.
Like it was vintage inspired.
She had like a little vintage suitcase.
She had a vintage telephone, you know,
with the handle, with the...
Rovary.
Yeah.
Rovary dial.
Don't ask me why.
There was no concept.
It was a...
We were just having fun.
It was good picture.
So I really enjoyed it.
And from there I got
into a portrait shirt.
And with this girl, we made a few more
photoshoots together.
Wait, wait.
So this was a pivotal photoshoot.
I think so.
Maybe not this one, but the next one.
And I wanted to put it up.
But you liked it enough that you're like,
okay, let's do this again.
Yeah.
And I was like, yeah, maybe I
will do a portrait shirt now.
Yeah, exactly.
So we did another photoshoot together.
And I remember very
clearly it was summer.
It was, I think it was August or July,
but it was like the
hottest day of summer.
It was like 30 something degrees Celsius.
And we went to local park and again, she
grabbed a few props.
She brought this beautiful book, like
vintage also inspired like a scrapbook.
It was really...
It had a beautiful cover.
And we took a few portraits.
Again, like just, you know, regular
portraits in the park.
I had a vintage manual lens, like Helios
lens that I purchased
on Smee market for like
$30 maybe.
And it produced like
beautiful swirly bow case.
I was like really into that at the time.
But I remember like social
media wasn't a thing yet.
Like it was only starting out.
So their photography forums were really
big where we'd post
your work and people would
discuss it.
So that's what I did.
And I remember my photography wasn't
really getting a lot of
attention because I'm assuming
it was pretty mediocre.
It was like, you know, just
portraits, nothing special.
It wasn't bad.
It was just not standing out.
And I was really frustrated about that
because you remember I
wanted to be different from
everyone else.
I wanted to stand up.
So I remember...
So remember double photoshoot was in
summer and I remember it was winter.
So like six months maybe after that.
I was sitting at home and I
was bored and I was like...
I was analyzing other people's work, what
I liked about them and what was different
about it.
And I figured out that people use
Photoshop but not in a
way that I was using it.
You know, clearing up maybe like skin a
little bit and doing
color and contrast maybe like
cropping and rotating.
That's it.
I figured out that people used it heavily
to like manipulate
images to create something
that wasn't captured in camera.
And that's when it clicked to me and I
was like, huh, maybe
this is something I can do.
And I remember I took one of the images
from that photoshoot in
the summer and I, you know,
I expanded the frame.
I created a square for the first time and
that's what I'm still
doing it to this day.
All my work is square.
I stretched the edges of the picture.
I created square.
I also stretched the bokeh.
I made it even like bigger and swirlier.
And I took, there was a picture where she
was holding a buck but
she was looking down.
Then I took the eyes from another picture
and I put them onto
the frame to look to her.
So I took them into the
camera, straight into the camera.
So I did all sorts of
manipulation like compositing.
I played with different, you know, film,
emulated color presets.
I put film grain.
And that's when this photograph was worn.
And if you like go to my website and
scroll all the way to
the down, it's still there.
It's still there.
It's still in my portfolio.
And I remember when I first posted it on
my, on the photography
forum that I was active
at, it like blew up.
Everybody absolutely loved it.
And I like to think that this was the
pivotal moment in my
career because it defined the
genre of surrealistic kind of like
storytelling, female
portraiture, which I still do now to
this day.
And I like to think about this moment as
a start on my career.
So it was like winter, 2000 and 11.
Yeah.
So being on photography forums and seeing
what other people were
doing was a big influence
for you in that it was kind of like a big
classroom, seeing what
other people are doing.
And that'd be a
really good way to put it.
Right.
Yeah.
And so it's like, you know, it's like
some things you see, it's
like, okay, that's nice.
That's not for me.
That's not for me.
You saw something and it spoke to you as
this, this is, this is
the direction I want.
And then you had this
like immediate confirmation.
Absolutely.
I was searching for my
style that would speak to me.
And I think because I've always been, you
know, artistic and I
couldn't create paintings
in a traditional way
because I never learned how to.
Photography gave me that kind of outlet
and manipulation was my
way of, you know, taking
a brush and creating these worlds, but
with the means of my
camera and my computer.
I always say that I use photography kind
of like in a way to
collect materials to create
something that is impossible to capture.
So from my shooting process is very
different from like traditional, how
people take pictures
traditionally because when you look at my
raw files, they
sometimes I'm very chaotic
because I take multiple frames.
I take separate shots of different
elements that I would like to add later.
And then I stitch them all
together into a final artwork.
And my goal is yes, to create something
that is a part of my
imagination, something that
does not exist.
And I like to make these pictures as
believable as possible that
kind of like make them come
to life.
And so you posted this
image and it kind of blew up.
What happened next?
For me, it was like an "oh" moment.
I was like, "Oh, this is
first of all, I achieved my goal.
I drew attention to my work.
Second of all, I realized that this is
what I would love to do now.
I love it.
I love it.
I'm passionate about it.
I think I'm good at it.
So 14 years later, I'm still doing it.
So we've never met, but
we have a friend in common.
So I've known about you for a long time.
And I always heard that there's actually,
I'm seeing that photo
behind you, the butterflies.
And that particular image also was a
pivotal moment for you, right?
In a way, yes, I think so because it came
around the time after
I moved to the United
States.
And like I said, moving across the ocean
to another country where
we didn't have anybody,
no friends, no family, no offers.
And it's like completely different
language and everything.
So it was really hard.
It was really
challenging and I struggled a lot.
I'm also a little introverted.
So for me, it's really hard to reach out
to people, make new
friends and just be social.
And obviously I struggle with it because
I'm a new country and I
have many friends here.
This language barrier, mentality barrier,
it all affected me
how easy it was to me to
go out there and photograph people.
Because before moving to United States, I
never took so far just before.
I was not even considering, I was like, I
want to be behind the camera.
I want to have full control.
I want to have a model and be responsible
for one part of the
image, which is taking
pictures.
But when I moved to the United States, I
realized, well, first
of all, it's really hard.
I'm a new country and I have many friends
and it's really hard
for me to reach out to
people.
So that was probably the main reason why
I started to do self-portrait.
And when I first did a self-portrait, I
realized that it's not just about me
being more comfortable.
It's also being even more intimate with
my work in a way
because now suddenly I am the
subject of my own dream worlds and my own
concepts and my own ideas.
Plus it's convenient when we travel with
my husband because if
you look at my portfolio,
a lot of images are on locations and all
of those locations are real.
I never do background swaps.
I never shoot on a gray seamless backdrop
and change the background, which is fine,
but it's just not for
me, but I don't do that.
All the locations you
see are real locations.
So I travel, I go out there and when we
travel, it's convenient,
just me and my husband.
So I can be the subject of my own images.
I don't have to find a
model and hire somebody.
So it has a lot of perks, but that's when
I started to do self-portraiture a lot.
And that's when I shifted to a more like
cooler blue tones, I think.
But this image that you can see behind
me, the butterflies in
my stomach, I think it
was kind of like a climax of that process
of me moving to
another country because it's
about anxiety.
When people, the phrase butterflies in my
stomach, people
usually like it to use when
you're like in love and you have this
anxious feeling
butterflies in your stomach, but any
anxious feeling can give you butterflies
in your stomach when
you're nervous or whatever
reason.
So for me, it was kind of like very
symbolic of that difficult
and dark period in my life
and it symbolizes me being reborn, like
letting out all the bugs and
being reborn is an integrant
in your country, I guess.
So yeah, that that photograph went viral.
It was all over the internet.
And for me, it was a big surprise because
I did not expect it.
I thought it was too dark.
It was too dark, too deep, too creepy for
masses, I guess, but
people loved it and I'm
grateful for it.
It's something, one of the few lessons
from art school that I
have kept is that when you
do something that's deeply personal and
vulnerable, you are most
likely going to hit a nerve that
everybody can, it resonates with everyone
because it's so schmoozapic.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
And so now you're, I've seen your work,
you've traveled, you do workshops.
Sometimes I do workshops, I do lectures,
speaking engagements.
How did that come?
Is that just work that came to you from
the exposure of being a
photographer, of having
that viral content?
I've actually done a few workshops before
I moved to the United States.
I've done a few
workshops in Ukraine and Russia.
So it wasn't something new to me.
I know just everybody did it back then.
Like everybody who would be a little bit
of popular online would
do photography workshops
and then I thought, why not do?
The first viral photograph of your
friend, that was still in Ukraine?
Yes, it was 2011.
So I moved to...
That's right.
Yeah, so you moved in 14.
Yeah, so okay.
Because...
I had a few years to, you know, I was a
few years into my career already.
What would you say is something that
you're really proud of
that feels like a made it
kind of moment for you?
There were a few different moments in my
career that I'm absolutely
grateful and I'm so proud.
I've done it like a few different
speaking engagements.
For example, I was a WMAX speaker at one
point and I was really
big, I think, in terms of
my career.
But what I can think of is probably my
project that I did a few
years ago called Two and
a Half Seconds.
It wasn't really pivotal in terms of like
success or career,
but this is the project
that I'm very, very
proud of that I did it.
And it was very deep and personal and
meaningful to me because it
was the first project that
was not just, oh, you know, just pretty
girls and pretty
dresses in pretty locations.
It had some meaning that I wanted to
address to my followers
and to people out there.
This is the environmental...
Yes, so yes.
So yeah, and the Two and a Half Seconds
is a project about
climate change awareness.
And I created it a few
years ago in Iceland in 2019.
But it was like a few years ago.
It was a three-year-long project.
And it's a series of
different photographs.
I think it's like nine or ten in total.
And each photograph represents and
illustrates a very
specific environmental issue by me
using photography medium, subjects,
locations, symbolism and metaphors.
What are you most
passionate about right now?
I don't know.
I'm going to be honest.
I'm kind of having a rough period right
now in terms of my photography journey.
The past few years have been really hard
with all different sorts of things.
War in Ukraine has definitely been a hit.
All the social media
algorithms are not helping.
And now the boom of the
AI also contributing of...
Maybe not just me, but a lot of people
are struggling with
motivation and inspiration.
So right now I'm trying to
figure out what's next for me.
If I should evolve as a photographer
altogether and maybe take a little bit of
different direction,
maybe explore different mediums.
I honestly don't know.
I know it feels like a very frustrating
place to be and I don't
want to make light of it.
But it's also in a sense kind of exciting
because you think
about your butterflies in
your stomach photograph.
It came from a very dark place and the
authenticity of that emotion is what
propelled it forward.
So it almost feels like you're going
through another metamorphosis.
So you touched on an AI and this was
something that I thought
about because I've known your
work and the thing that really stood out
to me is just how
seamless and believable your
images are.
In a time where Photoshop wasn't even all
that sophisticated
and that's probably why
you get selected to give workshops
because it's so well
thought out and it's interesting
to see because you sort of have like
behind the scenes images
that show what objects are
small and you enlarge then what objects
you sort of like created large versions.
So there's a lot of set design and
there's a lot that goes
into your photographs and
in the end what the result is this
surrealness of like this
feels like it's real but it can't
possibly be.
No it's not.
And now it feels like there's a part of
you that might have to
be like I actually go on
location I don't have AI
generate the location for me.
I actually have props I actually
photograph the props or and
make my props and I meticulously
put everything together and it shifts the
part of the conceptual
part of your photographs
because the
believability of the unbelievable.
It's not make sense but like you make it
you made it you made it make sense.
Yes.
And so it's like it can't be true but but
but it looks so real
and I does that you know
like just so I'm I'm very curious what
your sort of how you feel
about the fact that anybody
now can just dream up some surreal
situation and create an
image just by with a few prompts.
How do you how do you like how does that
make you feel and are
you on any level embracing
AI as a tool because you are somebody who
was embracing the
technology from the get-go
so I'm really curious I'm sure there's a
lot of like complicated
love-hate relationships
here and I would love for you to just you
know whatever you're
comfortable discussing.
So well first of all thank you the secret
of my photography is
that I do use a lot of
props and set design and installations
and I you know I travel
I go out there to a real
location and it's funny to me because
like you said from the
very beginning I've been
using Photoshop pretty heavily especially
compared to you know
traditional photographers
and my whole career I've been defending
myself people would say
me oh you know it's all for
a shop like this missily oh it's all
photoshop it's not a real
photography and I would have
to you know defend myself and tell them
that yes and no well yes I
do use a lot of compositing
and you know photoshop editing but I also
I go out there I take
pictures myself I do
use sets and props and I shoot as much as
possible on set and
that's what makes that's
what helps me create my images you know
believable with less effort
and now suddenly I have not
only photoshop is cool oh yes photoshop
it's all made by hand
suddenly I have to defend
myself that it's not AI yeah and I've
already had that reaction
from people who would see my
let's say Instagram account that I use as
a portfolio and was like
is it AI and I get very
frustrated frustrated obviously because
no I you know I I spend so much time
coming up with concept
developing concepts doing research doing
locations counting reaching
out to people models or whatever
shooting myself creating props sourcing
props me you know buying
props then putting everything
together and spending hours in photoshop
making that final image
and I've been doing this for
15 years of my career you know evolving
perfecting my skills learning
becoming a different person in
the process and then for somebody to come
and tell me oh it's all AI
with just you know click of a
button basically um yeah it's it's very
it's very frustrating
because now we have the social
media algorithm haven't been helping at
all you know to get your
work out there for it to be seen
and appreciated now the internet is
filled with all this AI slop that just
devalues people keep
telling me that yes people no don't worry
people are going to
appreciate people are going to you
know appreciate more because it's all
human made and like sure a
certain amount of people but the
rest are not going to care they're just
going to you know scrollish
social media whatever and just
go see pictures and they won't see a
difference and that is just
devalues everything we as an
artist do all our skills and experiences
and you know years of work
and effort and it just makes me
sad and angry and frustrated and
uncertain what's going to be next because
suddenly my skills as a
photoshop educator which i do i do
tutorials i do workshops i do
presentations are suddenly less
required but that is fine you know it's
just you know my way of
making a little bit of living but
as an artist it's also hurts because
suddenly suddenly somebody who didn't
spend that many years
or who didn't you know get required
skills talent whatever
suddenly with just a few prompts
they create an image and call it art and
i'm like sorry no this is
not art this is just a machine
creating an image for you using
everything we artists already create
scraped scraped images
to teach a little bit of everything from
we already created and generated
something new for you
so yes and you know it's just like it
always gets me also
frustrated the fact when all these like
tech people who do you know develop all
these tools and they're
like oh we've developed these
tools for you to make the process easier
i'm like yes but you guess
guess what we like the process
we as artists we actually enjoy the
process that's why we do it we like the
challenge we like a little
bit of challenge you know to you know
achieve the goal and then spend you know
time effort struggle
and then be proud of what we achieved
because if it's just a
click on a button then it's just
it's not interesting anymore it's not
exciting anymore and my
hope is that's going to happen
in the future that people are just going
to get bored and tired of
it and that's when the human
but again i'm like i'm a little skeptical
i'm so i don't know one one
way to think about it because
and and and it gets um more and more
realistic just exponentially
it because it teaches itself
it's it's just right right it's um but
what happens um that if
everybody can generate
the perfect image with a click of a
button um the the the
value of a perfect image
exactly that's what i'm saying like my
images are suddenly not
unique in a way anymore they're not
there are hubs though but i hope you know
a regular person who
just scrolls and they don't
they won't probably see a difference
between ai generated and
my work if suddenly my work
doesn't have any value or me or interest
and suddenly it's not oh
how you made it it's suddenly
oh it's probably ai and people won't go
any deeper than that and
won't look at my behind the scenes
videos or and it's for me it's i don't
know i hate it yeah no i
can hear the i can hear the
frustration i can i can only imagine
because this is this this was something
that and when you were
doing this 15 years ago we could not have
predicted yeah i always thought like
addicted because it's
creative process that machines cannot
replicate i'm safe it's
really i'm not very safe i mean i
think that's i think that's kind of one
of the lessons here but i i
think um and you know i don't
know if this is a direction to go but um
i think you're selling
yourself short when um when you're
comparing like when you're when you're
letting that comparison get
to you so much because that
is just like one superficial layer you
know so yes so somebody's scrolling
through instagram and seeing
your surreal images you know and and then
seeing uh ai images um one
thing and ai is getting a
little better but ai uh what's going to
become very clear is that
when everybody can uh generate
whatever image they want with a click of
a button and that becomes something
that's sort of normalized
what's going to stand out again is the
aesthetic of an artist your eye you know
your your sensitivity
to color your talent of storytelling um
of of having a concept an
idea and um you know and and
that there's something about like the
physicality of the props and there's
something about the fact
that it's a real location and a real
human being that you're
working with that um right now it's
it's something that was always part of
the image but i think that
might start to bubble up to the
surface because the the surreal um you
know seamless integration
that photoshop allowed you to do
that's that's going to start to like not
be as important but some of
the other things are always
going to be there and um ai is a great
tool but it can't replace human
imagination and creativity
i hope so i hope you're right but this is
the struggle and
frustration i'm going through right
now and struggling a lot with
inspirations and moving forward and
that's you know i i didn't
intend to like go there but i was curious
because your image
your images like the um
what what i get from the images like once
you get over there like wow
how did she do that like once
you get over that and people in the
future are not going to be stuck with
that wow how did she do
that because you know they they will
probably assume it's ai but
when when you get past that
you still have an incredible image and an
incredible body of work and an incredible
like storytelling and and everything else
and you are using real
people so um i think your art
is still there and i hope i get to talk
to you again in however
long it takes for you to sort
of like have the next breakthrough
because i know it's coming
like you took a leap of faith
and the cards were stacked against you so
much more in 2014 when you
you know just packed your
bags and moved to new york without a job
without a clue of what
happens next and um so i'm i'm
really excited to see what comes next for
you even though it feels really dark
right now um so and i
i hope i'm not like overstepping here but
no it's fine thank you so
much my my usual sort of like
question that i would ask is how would
you define success um and
it just feels maybe a little
not the right question to ask um in a
time when you're sort of
like trying to figure out what's
next um but maybe a different question i
can ask is as as a person who's creative
who has searched for a creative um form
of expression and you
know strongly embraced one
and has been producing a creative body of
work that's meaningful all these years um
how do you stay how do you stay creative
how do you stay
inspired even now it's hard
i'm gonna be honest it's hard um i don't
know i guess it's just
at this point when i'm you know trying to
figure out what's next
for me um the thought that
that this is now such a big huge part of
my life this is who i am
um i'm a photographer uh
i'm a digital artist whatever you want to
call it i've been doing
this for 15 years now almost
i can't just throw it all away i can't
it's just i can't even
think about it like how
let's just imagine that i would like to
quit for a second right i can't imagine
like what am i going
to do then like what what what else what
else because this is me
you know so i think this
thought keeps what keeps me going um and
i'm just trying to you know
like process that everything
has been going on the fast the last
couple of years and just
you know like think about like
think about like maybe i should you know
take a little bit of
different direction or maybe i just
you know like stay and like i said
photoshop was always like looked like
frowned upon and suddenly
it's cool again or like maybe you're as a
traditional painter
you were like oh nobody's
interested everybody went digital but now
suddenly traditional painters
what's the most valuable now
so maybe we just have to like wait and
see where it takes us and
not not give up in the process
so i think that's what keeps me going and
um just having these
conversations help you know
meaning among creatives and be among your
colleagues gives me a big
boost on motivations usually
okay same same and um i it's yeah the
thought that you're not
alone i'm not the only crazy
person in the room that everybody else is
that really helps yeah
yeah absolutely and and and
it keeps happening you know i think
that's um the example i
like to give is how photography
when photography became sort of
democratized everybody could have a
camera how it changed
portraiture yeah because that's actually
true artists who like
made a living painting maybe
people looked back at me back then as now
people look at ai oh now you can
photoshop everything
you know have to be a good photographer
anymore maybe you know and
and and those you know every
time there is this advance technological
advance in the art it and
it you know it will replace
some things and it will replace some jobs
you know i i think that when photoshop
became something a tool because before
that there were people
whose entire career was
retouching photos right in the lab yeah
it used to be you know
the norm for commercial
photography and fashion photography
things got retouched
suddenly you know you didn't
and i feel like we're going through
another big paradigm shift in
terms of um a skill set that
um but it's it's a skill set and in your
case it's a skill set
that you have perfected and
has has been such an important part of
how your art is made and how how you
think of yourself as
an artist um um you know it's i i can't
imagine how hard it must
be to suddenly be replaced
so i'm not i'm gonna i'm not gonna you
know put myself above everything i
usually i'm not gonna
lie i use it like i use general as well
it's here to stay it's
here to stay and it's like
and it's let's be honest it's incredible
like if you think about
the technology is absolutely
incredible and i i can't fight it like if
i can make my editing
easier faster and better than i
would probably do it exactly and i i use
it i use generative film ai
and photoshop i sometimes i
would even use me journey to create like
mood boards or references
or some inspirations i use
chat dpt to help me with emails because i
suck at emails i i'm not a
writer i i suck at writing so
that's been a game changer for me and my
process hasn't changed so
i'm using ai not to generate
but to complement my process so my
process hasn't changed i
still go out there i still go on
location i bring my props my gear i take
a picture i come back to my computer i
open photoshop and i
spend our photoshop just now instead of
you know there's a good
example i talk about all the time
i had a photoshoot where i um put a model
in a costume of a deer she
had like antlers a little
ears the hoof shoes and she was wearing a
wig beautiful long curly
wig and um it had like a
fake hairline obviously it was pretty
obvious that was a wig so before that i
would spend i don't know
15 20 minutes needy retouching it now i
just circle it and i
type in natural hairline
and it makes me in a second and i'm like
i'm blown away and of course
i'm going to use it i'm not
going to be here like i mean i mean i
respect photographers who
are like no ai like zero i
respect that i mean good for you but um
well i image image
manipulation is part of your artistic
form of expression and i guess one way to
think about it like you
wouldn't use photoshop for
you know like you wouldn't use photoshop
from 10 years ago now the
tools have gotten better
and so in a sense like your tool set has
gotten better i think i
think it's the optics that's
that's the problem right now it's the
optics and for us artists who rely on
social media especially
instagram to uh showcase our art and and
so yeah we're fighting
with this plethora of
of ai generated images and in your case
it's it it really butts
into like the the look of your
heart but yeah um i i i feel like
something really amazing
is going to emerge from this
because you know i like your optimism
it has to because you have the drive to
keep making art you have
the drive to keep telling
your stories and creating your images and
um so before you're like
you want to be you wanted to
make art that like looked like nobody
else's well here you are
again you know you wanted to look
like nobody else's in this case though
you know that everybody else
is ai not my my hope is this
whole such situation is also what keeps
me going is that after a
while all ai starts to look the
same exactly all the same after a little
while that you like i
played with me journey a little
bit after a little bit it's just all the
same no matter what you do
plus i try to you know oh maybe
i can use it for like inspiration and
like you know like creative
direction so i would type in
something like create a surreal scene
with like girl and a huge cat
something crazy it never it's
not because it can only it is it does not
have imagination it creates
beautiful women in beautiful
settings but it never it's not it's not
storytelling it does not help me with
coming up with ideas
it might help me with like the look i
want to achieve but not
the story behind it exactly
that's that's exactly it like it doesn't
have imagination of its
own and it's in you know
yes it has this vast library of images it
can pull from but um
it's not a match for human
creativity and human i i really hope so
yeah but you know pulling
back and looking at the arc
of photography and the arc of image
making um i'm really curious how the
introduction of ai and the
fact that it like automates so many
things that we use to value
and they just lose their value
because you know that there's no effort
in it anymore but it
brings out it will bring out
other things that ai can't do at the end
of the day it it it can't create art it
can't replace the art
well i wish you luck i know it's it's
it's been a tough couple years three
years it's been it's
been tough it's been tough but um i'm
wishing you all the success
thank you so much thank you
and thank you so much for uh coming and
talking and being so honest
about your process and where
you are i think it's very important to
share to be honest and to
share what's on your mind not just
oh look at me i'm so talented and
successful because that
doesn't help anybody like no i
i want to know that i'm not the only one
who struggled who goes
through these things and
it really helps so i think for me like i
i like highlighting uh
successes and you know like the
pivotal points where like you find your
success you find your voice
you find a direction i like
highlighting those because that kind of
optimism is something that drives me
forward and i feel it's
you know you hear stories and each story
is so so unique um and my
hope is what it what it says
is that there isn't just one way to do
things um and you know
you have to trust yourself
but in at the same time uh the other the
flip side of it is that uh
being a creative being an
artist you're there's also those times
when you're blocked when um
what you're doing is no longer
relevant or in the life choices yes
questioning everything and um
and that is such part of the
creative journey it really is it's always
part of the creative
journey and um yeah i feel like
the creative journey looks like exactly
ups and downs ups and downs
yeah yeah but it's you know at
the end of the day it's your it's your
story and it's your art and maybe uh how
you make it will have
change we will all have to adopt i guess
we do we do and um
yeah so thank you so much
yeah thank you so much for having me and
for this conversation thanks again for
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