Process

The Body as Surface

I worked as a physician before I came to photography. That work shaped how I see the body: as a structure — bone, muscle, skin, anatomy.

When I work with paint, I work with this structure. The paint settles on a living body — on the clavicle, on a tendon, on the skin stretched across a shoulder. It does not cover the body. It reveals its form.

I use different paints — matte, metallic, clay for texture. Each behaves differently. I apply them layer by layer, over hours. By the end of the session, the body has become a surface, ready to be photographed.

This is about how I see the material. With the person in the studio, I work differently — more on that below.

Without a Script

In the studio, there are two of us — me and the model. No crew, no assistants, no one else.

Before the shoot, the image is ready — concept, paint, props, light. But not the poses. There is no storyboard.

I give the model a general direction and ask her to improvise. We shoot a series, look at it together, I adjust — drop this, repeat that, try something different. Another series. This continues until something alive appears in the frame, and then I direct her more precisely.

The final image is not the model’s best pose, and not the image I planned. It is the intersection of her interpretation and my direction.

Light

The light in my work is soft — close to north light, the kind European portraitists from Vermeer to Sargent worked with. Technically, this is a flash passed through several layers, with large diffusers placed almost against the model.

This light gives smooth transitions and pronounced volume. But it does not dictate contrast. Contrast emerges on the body itself — skin reflects light one way, matte paint another, metallic a third. The light is even; the range comes from the surfaces.

This same light does not separate the figure from the background with a hard edge. The figure stays inside the darkness, gradually emerging from it. This is closer to painting than to photography.

The Final Image

Everything before this leads to one image.

Hours of work with paint, hours of shooting — for one photograph. Sometimes two or three. A photographer usually catches a moment, choosing the best frame from many. I work the other way: the moment is built in reality first — on the body, in the light, in the model’s pose. The camera only records what has already been built.

This is what separates the final image from the documentation of an event. It is not found — it is made. The viewer sees not a moment, but the result of long work, work that took hours and that started long before the first shot was taken.

Process photography by Sergey Gorshenin