NINA PROKOFIEVA
POEM P.
Some time ago, I took an interest in exploring the relationship that exists between a human person and their body. This led me to launch a project involving people who were invited to come to my studio, take their clothes off and share their feelings and sensations in front of the camera. One of these sessions particularly piqued my interest. Over the course of the shoot, P. was happy to share important insights and emotional experiences surrounding the complex relationship she had with her body. The shoot thus marked a significant experience for both of us as we discussed and worked through our respective feelings, sensations and emotions. It was all about being open and vulnerable. It was about witnessing a fleeting connection, a creative collaboration, an emotional link that miraculously emerges between two persons on either side of the camera.
For the vegetables and flowers shoot, I attempted to take an unconventional look at the shapes we rarely pay close attention to: I played with the light to offer an alternative perspective conferring on the vegetables an intimate, fragile, and even sexy quality. An inanimate object suddenly became erotic. I included these photographs in the same series because of the perceived similarities which I believe they share. My work with P. brought to mind the photos of vegetables I had made a few years earlier. So, I retrieved the older photos to compare them with the ones I was then making. The vegetables became a metaphor as I drew a parallel between the classical Greek curves of the girl’s body and the shapes of the vegetables in an intricate interplay of light and shadows.
the shapes and contours of vegetables and flowers.
Some time ago, I took an interest in exploring the relationship that exists between a human person and their body. This led me to launch a project involving people who were invited to come to my studio, take their clothes off and share their feelings and sensations in front of the camera. One of these sessions particularly piqued my interest. Over the course of the shoot, P. was happy
to share important insights and emotional experiences surrounding the complex relationship she had with her body. The shoot thus marked a significant experience
for both of us as we discussed and worked through our respective feelings, sensations and emotions. It was all about being open and vulnerable.
My mission was to observe and bear witness, without disturbing. The shoot used natural light to delicately
and genuinely express those parts of P.’s body she was happy for me to witness. We both emerged from this brief experience enriched, complicit as we were now in sharing and nurturing an important secret that left a deep imprint on both of us.
For the vegetables and flowers shoot, I attempted to take an unconventional look at the shapes we rarely pay close attention to: I played with the light to offer an alternative perspective conferring on the vegetables an intimate, fragile, and even sexy quality. An inanimate object suddenly became erotic. I included these photographs
in the same series because of the perceived similarities which I believe they share. My work with P. brought to mind the photos of vegetables I had made a few years earlier. So, I retrieved the older photos to compare them with the ones I was then making. The vegetables became
a metaphor as I drew a parallel between the classical Greek curves of the girl’s body and the shapes of the vegetables in an intricate interplay of light and shadows.