Fashion photographer Roman Bernardi-James about gloss and flying skateboards

Roman Bernardi-James is a Frenchman with Caribbean roots. At thirty-three he works as art director at The Imaginers' own agency, shoots for L'Officiel and the Wall Street Journal, and also does the trade shows MAN and WOMAN, which

GQ calls the best among the exhibitions of clothing. Look At Me Roman told how to combine the three projects and not screw it up.

Material prepared: Liza Kologreeva

In general, I was originally a graphic designer and worked in the French magazine WAD. Because of the needs of the publication took up shooting - and so began my career in the fashion industry. I did not study photography in special schools and did not assist the masters. Getting a job from brands like Diesel, Kenzo or Puma is an honor for me. But I think,

I don’t deserve it, because there are so many photographers in the world who have worked long and hard. I was just lucky - I feel the image and transfer my feelings to the photo. I love to take pictures and do not feel that I work while shooting. I’m shooting campaigns, shooting magazines, and taking pictures for myself. I do not even know what I love more. Sometimes it’s really easy to work with large companies: they have all the resources and they ask you to do what you want. For example, Kenzo gave me complete creative freedom - this is how their creative director Umberto Leon decided. Sometimes shooting for stamps is terrible. Brand, I will not say its name, I wanted fifty photos in two days, with almost no budget. At the beginning of a career, photographers often take out lookbooks, and this is a disaster, because brands want to make the maximum number of eyes for minimum money and time. There are funny shootings: once we made a story for WAD in Copenhagen. It ended up in a local prison because of the wrong drive by car, you know.

I founded The Imaginers agency together with my friend Olivier Migd. We are engaged in art-direction and production of advertising campaigns and, say, movie posters. Unfortunately, both I and Olivier are too busy with other projects. The last thing we did was showcases for the Hermes store in Shanghai. We also print the magazine of the same name. This is an intimate project, there is absolutely no advertising and other things that bring us money. Usually we dedicate one number to one person and tell about him in all ways, we say why he is extraordinary. In general, the DNA of our projects, both The Imaginers and the MAN and WOMAN trade shows, is humanity. The journal is the same: we show the universe of a single person through interviews and surveys. Unusual people become his heroes, but they are not famous or famous. It's just people who are doing something amazing in their environment. The first issue was dedicated to the guy I met in the Congo, where I was reporting. He was gay in a not very gay friendly country. Another hero of the magazine is a forester from my hometown: like a regular forester, but real crazy. I take a picture of the hero, and my friend, he works in French GQ, is responsible for the interview.

The story of the MAN trade show began like this. We had a friend, Antoine, who was involved in the Rendevouz trade show for the Surface to Air brand. The brand has closed Randevouz to focus on its own collections. Since we had a platform for creating such a project, why not use it? We decided to make a more compact trade show than the existing ones, which does not look like a fair, but as a store where designers meet with the best buyers. Therefore, it is a success: its participants say that they have more time to communicate and they feel comfortable. MAN is more human and simple - this is what we wanted to achieve. We choose brands for a trade show in a simple way: if we like collections, we take them. If the brand is young, then we must be sure that it is on the same wavelength with us. With regard to large brands, we also pay attention to points of sale - they must bring us the right buyers. The origin of the brands does not matter: it is not only America or France, but also England, Scandinavia and Japan. Working on MAN, I discovered a lot of brands. In fact, before, I was not interested in brands as such. Of course, I knew about Fred Perry, Lacoste or Levi's, who participate in our trade show, but smaller brands are new to me. New York and Paris MAN have one concept, except that the list of brands is a little different. We have competitors among trade shows. The bottom line is that they are all more ambitious. American GQ wrote that we are doing the best trade show. This season we held the first WOMAN trade show. God, that was a couple of weeks ago! It seems to have turned out very well, we are pleased with the brands that have trusted us.

Of course, I have to fly a lot for work. I hate waiting and queuing at airports and basically do not like to travel. When you find yourself at the destination - this is fine, but the whole process - getting up early in the morning, the time at the airport - is terrible. I have DJ friends who fly six times a week. Fortunately, I travel a lot, but not so much. Consider me lucky. By the way, when I was about sixteen, I studied Russian and went to Moscow with classmates. It's like Disneyland: we did everything we could, and everything, in general, drank, for example. I know that the country has changed, and I would love to come back. I remember how to say "I speak Russian," but that is all.

The main thing in the work - to properly allocate time. I have a Google Calendar, and I use it often, this is my secret to success. You need to learn self-organization: one week for a photo, another for The Imaginers, a third for a trade show. Well, I have partners with whom we share the work equally, so everything is pretty easy. Okay, I'm three people with the same name! I'm just another industry worker. I think if you find your way, as I did with the photo, and you really like what you do, you don’t feel that you work and you get bonuses from it. I do not even know what I will do in ten years. Fashion photography can change significantly, because, as we know, paper editions are dying out and everything becomes digital. Stamps are already asking to animate their photos, and perhaps commercial shootings will be completely different in the near future. Hell, I rarely think about him, but worth it. Art photography is unlikely to undergo significant changes, because it is an art, it does not need to respond to commercial needs, which cannot be said about fashion photography. I do not want to make predictions, because everything that we usually plan does not come true. Take, for example, flying cars from science fiction films. I have not seen one yet. I hope that the first flying skateboard from Back to the Future will appear, because I do not drive a car.