Phoenix

Photographer: Irina Karataeva

1. What significant life experiences or events have influenced and shaped your artistic vision?

My perception was shaped through displacement. I grew up between languages, cultures, and geographies - fifteen moves, five countries. That constant shift became my first teacher. It revealed that identity is fluid, migratory, and continuously rewritten by context. In that change, the body became my only point of truth: a map, a compass, a home. Through it, I began to understand the human form as a site of consciousness - a living archive where memory, and transformation coexist.

2. Collaboration often sparks fresh creativity. Can you share an example of a collaboration that led to an unexpected and exciting artistic outcome?

My practice unfolds as a dialogue between person and landscape, body and element, image and silence. I live in Cyprus, and every shoot takes place in a different part of the island: deserts, salt lakes, burnt valleys, and abandoned places. I choose each location intuitively, as if the land itself calls for a particular presence. Every collaboration becomes an act of mutual discovery: the model offers their essence, and the environment responds. At that point, direction turns into orchestration as I shape the rhythm, yet allow the moment to breathe. The image emerges in the tension between control and surrender, when human and nature move into resonance.

3. Walk us through a specific project that challenged your creative boundaries. How did you approach it, and what did you learn from the experience?

Phoenix emerged from devastation. After the wildfires that scorched parts of Cyprus, the landscape fell silent with black soil, and fragile ash. Months later, green began to reappear. That cycle of loss and renewal felt deeply human to me. I photographed a man standing amidst what had burned - a body carrying both the trace of fire and the pulse of return. Through Phoenix, I came to see resilience as transformation.

4. In the ever-evolving art world, what do you believe sets your work apart and makes it unique or groundbreaking?

I explore archetypes through structure and energy. Each image investigates how movement turns into form and how emotion materializes in space. The human presence serves as my language - a mirror of what lies beneath perception, a way to reveal the invisible rhythm of existence. I strive to create photographs that feel both ancient and immediate, speaking in the language of instinct and collective memory.

5. As you reflect on your journey, are there any specific goals or milestones you've set for your artistic career in the coming years?

I’m drawn to the psychology of transformation - how people rebuild themselves through movement, migration, and change. My ongoing project Where Are You From? expands this exploration, presenting identity as a living, shifting state. In the coming years, I plan to create collaborative installations combining photography, sound, and space - immersive environments where the viewer enters the same field of presence as my subjects. For me, art is an act of remembering - a return to what is essential.

• Story/Description

  Nothing truly dies - it only changes form.
  Even fire leaves a pulse behind.

  Last summer, the land around us burned.
  Villages turned to ash, trees became shadows.
  And yet — the earth remembers how to breathe.
  From what was destroyed, something new begins to grow.

  He stands where fire once ruled as a reflection of rebirth.
  Like a phoenix, both flame and renewal.
  Because nothing truly ends - it only changes shape.

• Team Credits

  Photographer: Irina Karataeva

  Model: Mamadou.bah001

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