katerina sysova
Know your shit
If you want to do art in general, it is good to know the scene well and know how it works. Especially, if you are starting, you need to be a curator to yourself and the audience. And be able to explain yourself and also understand your position within the arts. And also not to lose judgement. So that you know your work, and you know how it behaves within the work of other artists.
I like to work with other artists as I enjoy curating and combining concepts. I have put on some exhibitions before, so it is not totally out of my scope. I am not denying that there are very different approaches in theoretical stuff. When I am working on something it works the best for me when I know my shit rather than full-on improvisation. It is a way of working. For someone, improvising is the way and he is doing great stuff. But you have to know your shit and you have to know what works best for you. When I am aware of what is happening outside, and I can compare it with what is happening inside me.
I think a lot of artists underestimate the theories they should know.
Work ethic
Lockdown is a time to clean up a bit. I try to create a schedule that I run by every week such as: waking up early in the morning and shooting every Friday. It is hard to keep up with it but that is for everyone. It is sometimes good to force yourself to work to try hard. It influenced me only in a practical sense, not my habits. In terms of the body of work, I think I will see it in the future if lockdown managed to influence it anyhow.
The cookbook is something I am focused on right now to finish. I think in a way I might have lost some sort of inspiration for it during these times as it is hard to interact with things from outside. I like to work with people. My favourite people to work with are the ones I worked with before, as they know what to expect and get relaxed.
One way is to work with people and wanting to get to know them in pictures, you want to show what type of personality this person has, and the other type of work which I do is rolling by an idea, and I prefer working with actors because of that as his personality, stays in the background, and he becomes whatever you wish him to become but, it is quite hard to push even that. You need to find the right type of people that communicate the picture.
When I shoot, I usually create a terrible mess.
soundtrack of your life: Silence is underestimated
Food Fetish
My composition is never an improvisation I plan and draw very carefully what I am about to shoot. Some stuff is created spontaneously on the shoot, but usually, the process is guided. Sometimes I use paintings from the 17th century from old masters as a remake. References are important in my work.
It started at my university. Food was a semester's work we needed to experiment with but, it never happened but, I carried on, and that's how the idea of a cookbook was born. It works as a guide to Czech cuisine. I want to finish this project as I know I don't have enough for the book nor do I have the text finished. I just don't want to be stuck with it.
Often people without any art background consider good photography only "good" if it is labelled being "beautiful". I mean when you ask them what aspect for photography to be "good" they say it should be "beautiful". But it is not. It would be great if we could change that as people with a visual background in visual storytelling, so we are not attacked all the time by stupid images that are everywhere around us. Images that are cliche and it is not about aesthetics all the time there should be energy present ability to communicate something.
For me, humour is very important, and I would like to bring people to laugh and relax looking at my images.