When I met Nastya for the first time, we were able to talk a lot straight away. On the car ride to the location, we were just bubbling away. And even during minutes of silence, it didn't feel weird. It was okay to just not say anything.
I'm more than 20 years older than her and therefore have a different perspective on life. Nastya was so life-affirming, so full of curiosity and enthusiasm that she absolutely blew me away. She brings a certain shyness and youthfulness that mysteriously awakens a protective instinct in you and at the same time she is absolutely mature, independent and experienced.
Pull of Life was my first shoot with Nastya and after just 3 hours together in the studio, I asked if I could photograph her again in Fuerteventura in December. That's how quickly she convinced me. I am a big fan of this lovely person.
My series title is intended to suggest that life is a strong, inescapable force that casts a spell over people. I want to emphasize the positive and life-affirming aspects of existence, because with no one have I succeeded in doing this as well as with Nastya.
I'm not really a studio photographer. But for the break, for variety, for contrasts, I decided to shoot a series in an empty room. A few weeks earlier — in 2023! — I had corona. How stupid is that? After the pandemic and three vaccinations, I still fell ill in the summer.
I only felt sick for two days. But because I didn't want to infect my wife, so I isolated myself in the bedroom until my tests came back negative. Not in the sense of a strict quarantine. Just not to be so much in the same room as my wife.
But my point is: I was able to use the time in bed to think of scenes to photograph with Nastya in the studio. The mirror motif was one of these dream shots. I simply shot it upside down. If you turn the book over, you'll immediately understand what I mean. That's how I got this unusual perspective without reflecting myself in the mirror.
Limiting yourself to four pages is difficult. But Nastya has already been seen twice before in this book. That's why the selection had to be narrow. Now how do you select the images? Why do you choose a particular motif? What kind of thoughts are going through your head?
I let my gut feeling and my intuition guide me. My only criterion is: Do I like what I see?
But of course that's not enough if I like Nastya anyway and I have a lot of pictures in which she looks good. So I choose images that contrast with each other. I think in double pages and create pairs of images.
Then I let my selection rest and look at it again a few hours later. I really like this selection process. But it takes time.
For example, when I work for Playboy, the photo editors and editor-in-chief make the selection. The motifs they choose almost always differ from my personal favorites. Which makes me doubt.
Every person responds to different things. It could be body language. A facial expression. The shape of the breasts. A hairstyle. The light. So many little things come into play and it's true that nuances can make the difference in the selection process.
