Shooting with (Patreon)

Stanislav Kraievskyi 

Today I had an interesting meeting and shooting with a photographer whom I classify as an artist. And the artist is not about the quality and beauty of photography, composition, the ability to do post-production. For me, an artist is a person who carries a certain idea through photography, has his own vision. With such photographers, I am not afraid to experiment, to pose strangely, to use specific props - I feel complete trust in this person's vision. I know that he implements his idea not because of the desire to please others, he does it for himself - to find and implement his idea.

  We shot in a very neglected apartment with a very specific interior. The impression is that it has never been cleaned and every night new people spend the night there - they sleep in the same bed, dry themselves with the same towel and drink tea from the same cup. I will not go into the details of his idea - it was all about loneliness and emptiness. I really felt at some point a kind of hopelessness (

Short conversations with Roma (the photographer's name) made me think a lot about what I do and my feelings at this stage of my work.

He spoke about the "process" and its importance in creativity and work, about the separation of commerce and "photos for yourself", about work for a drawer, about self-evaluation.... I realized that I began to pay too much attention to the result - to its assessment, and not to the process. I started filming more to please others and not myself - even when I think I'm filming something for myself. I wanted to finish my graduation project from the course on project photography... I started it in 2019 and it was really interesting to me at that time, but for some reason I didn't finish it. Now I want to finish it just for myself - make the book as I wanted - and show it when I drink beer with friends)

And he spoke about the fact that we do not notice ourselves as cool in the moment, but only when we look at our past - about a photograph in time. And I realized that I still haven't photographed the real me. I tell everyone that nudity helps me and others to open up emotionally in the frame and be myself - but I look at my past self-portraits and realize that there are no my experiences and my thoughts - because I end up making this state public on social networks. - and maybe we should just do it with the idea of a "drawer" and that will be more authentic and me. During these 3 years, I forgot why I started all this.

Roma and this apartment plunged me into depressive thoughts - but real thoughts - I will research and think. Thank you for this day

P.S. I don't know if the metaphor "working in a drawer" sounds right in the text... I'll just decipher it... it means that you take photos or create something and don't show it to anyone, just keep it in your desk-wardrobe-drawer-safe