After featuring the radical and original photographic projects of Elle Muliarchyk, time came to ask her for an interview. Elle was discovered in New York by Patrick Demarchelier and started off as a model. She currently lives and creates in New York and received worldwide attention after her “Dressing Rooms” photo series was presented in the New York Times Magazine. Since then, she has been busy and today she shares her plans, inspirations and thoughts. Enjoy!
Hello Elle! It’s a great pleasure to have you in EyeCandies! What triggered your passion for photography? How and when did it all start?
Photography is more like a tool to me with which I document my current fetishes and experiences. I took my first picture with my first camera in a dressing room of a posh boutique, rehearsing for the first most important shoot of my life with Patrick Demarchelier. And I spent next 2 years taking guerrilla self portraits in dressing rooms wearing the most beautiful and expensive garments I’d never be able to afford. I created my alternative realities there using various backdrops and crazy props of enormous sizes and materials... The store security kicked me up upon discovery, or even called the Police... But my obsession of doing whatever it takes for the image... has begun!
Hello Elle! It’s a great pleasure to have you in EyeCandies! What triggered your passion for photography? How and when did it all start?
Photography is more like a tool to me with which I document my current fetishes and experiences. I took my first picture with my first camera in a dressing room of a posh boutique, rehearsing for the first most important shoot of my life with Patrick Demarchelier. And I spent next 2 years taking guerrilla self portraits in dressing rooms wearing the most beautiful and expensive garments I’d never be able to afford. I created my alternative realities there using various backdrops and crazy props of enormous sizes and materials... The store security kicked me up upon discovery, or even called the Police... But my obsession of doing whatever it takes for the image... has begun!
New York Times Fashion Week Diary is one of your latest published projects in Behance. Can you give us your point of view both as a photographer and a model?
Oh! I had been a photographer and a model for a long time, but Fashion Week is something else. This is an experience that absolutely transformed me. I’m writing a self-shrinking essay about it... My dream would be to have it printed in the New Yorker Magazine!
Oh! I had been a photographer and a model for a long time, but Fashion Week is something else. This is an experience that absolutely transformed me. I’m writing a self-shrinking essay about it... My dream would be to have it printed in the New Yorker Magazine!
I discovered your work through your “Dressing Rooms” series. A very daring and inspirational project I must add! What do you want to communicate through these visuals and what was the most awkward moment you found yourself into?
As a woman, you wake up every morning, see yourself in the mirror and have to function and fulfill many roles (many costumes) no matter how beautiful or not beautiful you feel that day. By the clothing you decide to put on you that morning you design your own level of expectation of what you can achieve and create that day. it’s like you try to live up to your outfit! It was a very intimate experience of trying on all those garments that didn’t belong to me, and photographing myself in the private. But I also lived my fantasy of being a supermodel, adored and having millions in the bank!
As a woman, you wake up every morning, see yourself in the mirror and have to function and fulfill many roles (many costumes) no matter how beautiful or not beautiful you feel that day. By the clothing you decide to put on you that morning you design your own level of expectation of what you can achieve and create that day. it’s like you try to live up to your outfit! It was a very intimate experience of trying on all those garments that didn’t belong to me, and photographing myself in the private. But I also lived my fantasy of being a supermodel, adored and having millions in the bank!
How do you experience a photo shooting as a model and how as the photographer?
I was just asked this question for Behance 99% interview, I really tapped into something... Just use the quote. "Modeling to me is a performance art, it’s very internal, it’s like your body is making love to the clothes you wear, or having a conversation with it. Photography is like hunting in a dangerous forest, or being in a combat."
I was just asked this question for Behance 99% interview, I really tapped into something... Just use the quote. "Modeling to me is a performance art, it’s very internal, it’s like your body is making love to the clothes you wear, or having a conversation with it. Photography is like hunting in a dangerous forest, or being in a combat."
As you’ve informed me, you’ve planned yet another original photographic experiment including psychics and a transforming model! Do share all the details!
I wanted to conduct an experiment on how our appearance, what we wear , can affect our destinies! I wanted to do it in the most literal extreme way. - With fashion, makeup and wigs I transformed Meghan Collison into many archetypal female characters and sent her to many psychics in NYC. She received a “new fortune” (both very good and very bad) every hour for a week! The fashion was much more powerful than the psychics’ intuition - they never recognized the true Meghan! It was an amazing life-altering live performance that Meghan did! I don’t think many people could “survive” this! I created the photo essay for Dossier Journal and the film for T magazine.
I wanted to conduct an experiment on how our appearance, what we wear , can affect our destinies! I wanted to do it in the most literal extreme way. - With fashion, makeup and wigs I transformed Meghan Collison into many archetypal female characters and sent her to many psychics in NYC. She received a “new fortune” (both very good and very bad) every hour for a week! The fashion was much more powerful than the psychics’ intuition - they never recognized the true Meghan! It was an amazing life-altering live performance that Meghan did! I don’t think many people could “survive” this! I created the photo essay for Dossier Journal and the film for T magazine.
Use one of your photos to describe your current mood
I have to use TWO: The still from my current movie - a collaboration with Phillip Lim. Going through the narrow alleys in New York, with a light in the end.
I have to use TWO: The still from my current movie - a collaboration with Phillip Lim. Going through the narrow alleys in New York, with a light in the end.
Portrait of my empty bed that I photographed in Sleepy Hollow in New York. I’m doing series of people’s beds (with a person in it or empty) in the places that describe their dreams. I always feel like an alien visiting this planet for the first time. And photography and film helps to discover this world. The only time I felt connected with myself and this world was collaborating with BellaFreud.
Where do you seek for inspiration? Who are your top 5 photographers?
Things that inspire me: Photographers: (2) artists: (2) writers: (1)
Terry Richardson
Nobuyoshi Araki
Bruce Nauman
David Lynch
Nabokov
and my most incredible Enfant-Terrible ultrasexy mom!! Her life will be the subject of my first feature movie!
Things that inspire me: Photographers: (2) artists: (2) writers: (1)
Terry Richardson
Nobuyoshi Araki
Bruce Nauman
David Lynch
Nabokov
and my most incredible Enfant-Terrible ultrasexy mom!! Her life will be the subject of my first feature movie!
Elle thank you very much for participating in the EyeCandies interviews!
LINKS: […]
- http://www.afgmanagement.com/gallery?arid=2
- http://www.behance.net/ElleMuliarchyk
LINKS: […]
- http://www.afgmanagement.com/gallery?arid=2
- http://www.behance.net/ElleMuliarchyk