Anastasia Mihaylova
Anastasia is a 26 y/o photographer in the Ukraine and currently a volunteer to support her country in the face of Russian attack. Nevertheless, we talked about her photographic development, why she focused on nude photography, how she works and what role nature plays in it.
Image: Self Portrait
Thomas Berlin: Anastasia, you are a photographer and model. What came first?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Since I started shooting from the age of 14, so 12 years ago and taking self-portraits only a year ago. Of course, firstly I am a photographer.
Thomas Berlin: I noticed you as a great nude photographer. Did you have other photographic subjects before? And what do you particularly like about nude photography?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Yes, definitely I had. For 12 years I was shooting absolutely everything- from subject photography to weddings, birthdays, reportage, etc. So I have tried absolutely everything, but only in art nude did I truly find myself, found my calling. I believe that only through the nude it is possible to show who we are - and we are, first of all, children of nature. This is what I like the most in this genre of photography.
Thomas Berlin: How would you describe your photographic style?
Anastasia Mihaylova: I take pictures of people without any makeup, clothes, or manicure, I do not retouch people in my pictures, because only without all the tinsel you can show how beautiful a person is. Just a person and a camera, and nothing else. To show something real, something natural - this is the essence of my photography.
Thomas Berlin: Your pictures are very beautiful. Is beauty the overall goal of your work or do you have an additional mission? Or a statement that is important to you?
Anastasia Mihaylova: With my photographs, I help people to love themselves the way nature itself created us, because how could it have created something that is not beautiful? My mission is to show people who they really are so that people stop being afraid of their bodies and stop considering them something bad and something to be ashamed of. My mission is to change the attitude of people towards the body, completely desexualising it and showing that we are just a part of nature, we are its beautiful creation that needs to be loved.
Thomas Berlin: How would you most like to see your images, e.g. in an editorial or on a gallery wall?
Anastasia Mihaylova: I like to see my works on the walls of galleries, in Times Square (one of my NFT works was shown there). I like to see my photos on the covers of magazines. Since social media are harassing artists like me, showing your works in real the world is very important, because tomorrow your page on Instagram may be deleted again, but your work will continue to hang on the gallery wall.
Thomas Berlin: Do you work more conceptually or spontaneously?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Most often, of course, I stick to the concept of connecting a human with nature, but sometimes a spontaneous idea comes to mind when, for example, I see some interesting location (like a shooting in a museum with red walls) and I just obey the call of the soul and do what I want :) So I try to never limit myself in creating the art :)
Thomas Berlin: How can I imagine a shooting with you? By that I mean the shooting idea, your model selection and working with them, the preparation, the duration another aspects how your shootings usually go.
Anastasia Mihaylova: I very rarely work with new models, so getting the shooting with me is quite difficult. I'm already used to working with people whom I know well, I know that they are ready to stand over a cliff, lie on a glacier, and so on for the sake of art. And they do this not because I asked so, but because our views and ideas completely coincide. Often we understand each other without words. The preparation process depends on the idea itself, most often I come to the location, study it and imagine how the shooting will look here. Sometimes the location can be a two or three hours drive one way and getting there is quite problematic, so sometimes the models are consciously and without problems ready to take risks, go somewhere without knowing whether it will be possible to shoot something there, so I really appreciate my models for this, they love adventures no less than I do) Therefore, as I said, it is very important to find not just a “pretty girl” for shooting, but a person close to you in spirit and then be sure you will get an amazing result. The duration of the shooting depends on many factors - who and where I am shooting. Sometimes I can make a good series in 10 minutes, and sometimes it takes an hour if the location is quite difficult or dangerous. But most often I shoot very quickly) Therefore, when going for the shooting, I already clearly know what the result I want to get.
Thomas Berlin: Could you please tell me something about how you deal with light?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Since I’ve given up studio light a long time ago. When I was studying at the Academy of Photography in Warsaw, there were a lot of classes about studio lighting, and this is when I realised that studio light is absolutely not for me. And now I work only with natural light and this is enough for me. And I can't even tell what kind of light I like most - bright direct sunlight or when it's cloudy outside. In all cases, the shots are completely different in terms of mood, you just need to think about what kind of mood you want to show in your photos. For example, when we were shooting on the glaciers in Iceland, it was nighttime there (it doesn’t get dark in Iceland in summer) and therefore the whole sky was overcast and everything around seemed bright blue, like the glaciers themselves, and it was amazing. If it was daytime and there was the sun, the pictures turned out to have a completely different atmosphere. But if talking about artificial light sources, I did several shootings with an ordinary table lamp at home and the pictures turned out to be very intimate. I also like such experiments for a change.
Thomas Berlin: When are you satisfied with a work or what is a good picture?
Anastasia Mihaylova: To be honest, the days when I didn’t like what I shoot are long gone. These were the days when I shot something that was not what I had a soul for. And once you find yourself, your style, you are unlikely to not love the result if you tried your best and shot from the heart. For me, a good picture is one that you want to admire, which completely conveys the author’s idea without description and words, which evokes vivid emotions inside and the feeling that this photo is alive. Because sometimes photos do not cause absolutely any emotions, no matter how beautiful this picture is, and sometimes it’s the opposite way, you look at the photo for the first time and want to “gasp” in amazement and return to this photo again and again. A photo should touch, if it doesn’t, then it’s just an ordinary picture, like a million others just like it.
Thomas Berlin: Do you have photographic role models? And who or what inspires you in general?
Anastasia Mihaylova: It may seem strange, but no. There are works that I really like, but most often they are little-known photographers and it can be just a few photos in their portfolio. I am inspired by nature. More than anything, I love to travel and hike in the mountains. After such beauties that your eyes see, it is impossible not to create something beautiful too. Therefore, my source of strength and inspiration is definitely nature and mountains.
Thomas Berlin: How do you see the art market for nude photography? And what influence does the possibly increasing prudery in society and in social media have on this?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Unfortunately, the oppression of art nude artists is growing more and more. Even in the Renaissance, people portrayed the nude and it was regarded as art. Now, this is regarded as “sexual harassment”, I think everyone saw this inscription when Instagram deletes another harmless photo. Therefore, it is very difficult to say what the market will be for artists like me. I would like to believe that something will change in the minds of people, people will want to be free, and not slaves to the system that dictates to all of us how to treat our own bodies, which Mother Nature gave us. Although sometimes I still think that people working at Meta, were immediately born in clown costumes. That is why for Art nude artists if there is a future, it is in Web3 because Web2 will probably soon prohibit even posting selfies in profile if you are not wearing a veil.
Thomas Berlin: I would like to briefly address the technique. Which camera and which lens do you like to photograph the most? What other equipment is essential?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Previously, I had a large number of completely different lenses. I constantly changed them, bought new ones and new ones. There were also Soviet time lenses, which I used through an adapter, by the way, I loved them very much. But when I switched from Nikon to Canon, I had to sell absolutely everything. And now I shoot only on Canon R5 plus Sigma 35 mm. I no longer use anything and no additional equipment. I realised that you can shoot beautifully on anything, even on a phone, the main thing is WHAT you shoot.
Thomas Berlin: Of course WHAT you shoot is important but I think the composition before or after the shot expresses how we see the subject or object on the image. Or do you think that it is less important? Do you have a specific approach to compose the image with your valuated subject?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Previously, I paid a lot of attention to building a composition in a photograph, but at the same time I hardly thought about its fullness (the idea, the meaning that you put into a photo). But now I have come to the conclusion that the fullness of the photograph and its meaning are of the utmost importance. During the shooting, I give myself completely to the process and do not want to think about technical aspects. But when cropping, I pay more attention to composition.
Thomas Berlin: How does your post processing looks like?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Since my Camera has really excellent color reproduction, I process photos absolutely minimally. As I said, I do not retouch the skin and body, so sometimes I can add a little more contrast, and make the photo darker or lighter. Most often, my processing consists of cropping, I really love all sorts of details, close-up skin, eyes, and so on, so in 90% of the case, all my processing consists of cropping photos.
“Being a nude model is that it helps me to accept myself and my body.”
Thomas Berlin: Because you are also a model, you know both standing behind and in front of the camera. Do these two different experiences help each other?
Anastasia Mihaylova: To be very honest, I always said that I don’t particularly like being a model. When I take my self-portraits, then I still have the passion of a photographer and the process captivates me, because even in such moments I show myself more as a photographer than a model. But when someone takes photos of me, I can't say that I get too excited about the shooting process. I do this more in order to boost my self-confidence and to get rid of tightness and restrictions in my head. I also do this to better understand the models that I shoot. I want to know how they feel on the other side of the camera) and yes, it really helps me a lot)
Self Portrait
Thomas Berlin: Self confidence is an important aspect I hear often from models. Which other aspects do you favour and which ones are challenging?
Anastasia Mihaylova: What attracts me to being a nude model is that it helps me to accept myself and my body. And it’s also very interesting to watch how it changes over the years because in ordinary life you just don’t pay attention to it, but with a photo, things are completely different. It is very interesting to pay attention to the details, to analyse what has changed in you over a certain period of time. Did you feel more confident this time, did you begin to love yourself more, and so on. These are exactly the things that really catch you in nude photography. In general, I see no difficulty in this, except that once again you are being hunted down by social networks with their prehistoric limitations. Otherwise, perhaps, I will not be able to name a single disadvantage in this beautiful genre of photography :)
Thomas Berlin: How should photographers deal with models? And do you experience differences between male and female photographers?
Anastasia Mihaylova: I believe that any photographer must think about the safety and health of his model. I often hear stories about how photographers force their models to get into the ice-cold water, in some mountain lake, for example. If the model feels comfortable at the same time and handles the cold well, then, of course, there is no problem, but if the model says that she is very cold, but the photographer insists, I do not consider this normal and I would never work with such a photographer. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of such cases, when the girls then developed cystitis, or they get a bad cold. Therefore, art is, of course, wonderful, but health is always more important because you can’t buy it for any money.
Personally, I don’t feel the difference between male and female photographers, the main thing is that it is comfortable to work with a person, and it doesn’t matter what gender they are. And to be honest, the girls took pictures of me only twice, all the other photographers were men and I never had any problems related to the fact that they were men. Again, this is probably because I very carefully choose who I work with. If something alarms me in a person already at the time of messaging and discussion of the shooting, I simply decline the shooting with such person and that's it.
Self Portrait
Self Portrait
Thomas Berlin: Can you describe an interesting experience from the model's point of view?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Probably the most interesting and sad at the same time experience happened to us recently. We were shooting with my husband in a field outside the city where there were only cows. The shooting was in tall grass where you couldn't even see me. And then about 15 minutes later I saw a woman coming down the hill with a stick in her hand. I started dressing up quickly and then I heard her screaming insults at us, threatening to call the police and calling us stupid youngsters. In fact, when you are already 26, and you are called a youngster, it’s even nice :)), but at that moment, of course, I felt terrible, because in response I also said a lot of nasty things to her. But the worst thing is that such situations make you understand how narrow-minded people are in Ukraine, who believe that taking nude photos outside the city in the field is something wildly terrible for which one can come and start insulting a person. To be honest, this was the first time I encountered such a situation, but it gave me even more strength to show people that the human body is not something bad and that we need to continue to introduce the normalisation of the human body into society even more and never give up. The photos still came out beautiful :)
Thomas Berlin: Do you make a living from photography and modeling? Which part is the most important for you?
Anastasia Mihaylova: I make money from both. As a model, I never take money for shooting, and most often I do self-portraits because they are what everyone likes the most. But on my Patreon, I show all my works, both as a model and as a photographer. But a photographer's earnings certainly bring a lot more finances outside Patreon.
“ I have big plans for the future.”
Thomas Berlin: What are your plans or expectations both as a photographer and as a model for the next few years?
Anastasia Mihaylova: As a model, I have absolutely no expectations, but as a photographer, I have big plans for the future. Until the end of 2022, my works will be presented at a few more exhibitions in Milan, Barcelona, New York, Miami, and so on. I plan to finally release two Photo Books with my works, the printing of which has been delayed for the time being due to the war in Ukraine. I would very much like to start cooperation with galleries in Europe on a permanent basis. All in all, there are a lot of plans, the hope is that one life is enough for all of them))
Thomas Berlin: After so many photo themes, I would be interested to know what you do privately when you are not in front of or behind the camera.
Anastasia Mihaylova: In addition to photography, I also make soft toys. For about 5 years I earned money only thanks to my toys, I really loved to invent and create them, but now, unfortunately, I no longer have enough time for this, since photography has replaced almost any other activities in my life. But when I have free time, I do yoga, I love reading books and I love watching movies. From the moment the war began, I actively began to volunteer. My husband and I helped elderly people, people living with disabilities, and animals. Now we have switched more to animals and shelters. In short, it's never boring )
Thomas Berlin: Anastasia, thank you so much for your insights. I wish you successful book releases and exhibition, invite me to the Vernissage :) But first of all I hope that the war against your country will end soon. Just as a last point: Do you want to say something else?
Anastasia Mihaylova: Thank you very much too and I also really hope so. And of course, it was very interesting to answer your questions and share my thoughts.
You find Anastasia both on her website and on Instagram.
All images: © Anastasia Mihaylova / Do not copy.
Self Portrait