Alina Nikitina on photography and the cult of harmony
beauty - the word that most often appears on the covers of magazines and the concept with which we unconsciously measure everything around. Yourself first. At the same time, a single and unchanging idea of beauty never existed - as our heroine Iris Apfel said, "in a society where there is one standard of beauty, something is wrong with culture." We talked with five people of completely different professions and looks, whose lifestyle or occupation is associated with a reflection on the beauty of the body, and also asked them to film for us in that degree of nakedness in which they feel comfortable. Our fifth heroine, photographer Alina Nikitina, spoke about why photographers and lenses love skinnies, how to deal with complexes and not be afraid to show their bodies.
Why did you decide to become a photographer?
Mom spent all her childhood shooting with her sister and brother, she liked to immerse us in some kind of fantasy atmosphere. I remember how we lived in Latvia in the old house of my great-grandmother, who was almost 90 years old: she played the guitar, although she saw almost nothing, we danced in dresses that my mother made, and my mother rented us on Zenit. It was like the stories that Sally Mann makes. I think this directly affected my inner world. Another kindergarten, where there were huge windows: all the lighting that I now use in my projects is memories from my childhood. In addition, I constantly wriggled as a child in front of a mirror, I could sit for hours and look at myself. When I was 16, I started shooting too - I just took my mother's camera.
Has your perception of yourself changed much?
I realized that I was beautiful, somewhere only 24, that is, only five years ago.
How did it happen?
I lost weight (laughs). And repainted. I was dark blond, and when I painted my blonde and became brighter, men began to pay attention to me, much more than before, they began to say compliments. And women too. Like many, I depend on the opinions of others. I try to get rid of it and, it seems to me, it works - at least in comparison with how much I depended on the opinion of people at the age of 21. Not to mention childhood, when the foundations of your self-perception are laid: you are criticized a lot, and at the same time you praise a lot - so that you have an ambivalent attitude towards your own appearance. You can be strengthened in the opinion that you have a beautiful figure, but at the same time an ugly walk.
Has this prompted you to somehow sharpened to see beauty in other people? Where does this incredible craving for beauty come from?
It seems to me, it is laid by nature. There is a golden section - even when there was a cult of a full body, nobody canceled proportions. It seems to me that when we see the perfect face, we immediately react to it - right down to the narrowing and expansion of the pupil. It literally intoxicates me, I become like a man who sees a beautiful woman, and I can just sit and listen to anything, swing on a chair. I am greatly affected by beauty.
Photography truly loves leaner figures, flowing lines and classic proportions.
Do you feel at work that the ideas about the beautiful are very narrow now?
I go to photo courses where we are first taught how to shoot models. How to shoot them as thin as possible, with as long legs as possible, turn them in some angle so that they look spectacular. Full hips, wide waist - it's all cut off. Photography really loves leaner figures, flowing lines and classic proportions. In fact, we also love them in life; I do not live at the time when full bodies are sung, I was born in the twentieth century - today the cult of a slim body reigns. And yes, I myself depend on these very standards. My entire cultural background in the field of photography is built on similar pictures: I like thinness, in me this is brought up with the same gloss. On the other hand, I would sometimes really like to masterly be able to deviate from all these standards, to fall in love with people, regardless of their appearance, to be able to emphasize their individuality, but for the time being this is not so easy for me.
In commercial orders and in artistic filming, I am always asked to make the hero more beautiful than he really is. Suppose you can deploy a full girl in three quarters, thus emphasizing the bending of the waist, and the camera that turns the picture into a flat one will do its job - the stomach will look much more flat. In the pictures we all look a bit fuller: this is largely due to the fact that the photographic image is flat. Relatively speaking, the camera has only one eye - a lens, and it makes a simple one out of a complex picture. Imperfect. The trick of our perception of photography - if we talk about the physical - is also in the fact that we also see this picture simplified by the camera with two eyes and subconsciously, we automatically finish it to the volume.
So most photographers like to work with a slim body?
Of course. It is in some sense blank, it is easier to create the images you need as an artist from it, it is easier to collect the picture that you have invented in advance. Now there is an urgent need to revise modern standards of beauty, which are largely based on the cult of models. Attempt to be beautiful in most cases, but sometimes reaching the point of absurdity - I am strongly opposed to stigmatization and striving for it as a vice. Our life is so arranged that we have to consume a lot of everything that is not prescribed by nature: we smoke, we drink, we eat mountains of bread and sugar. Then our skin fades, cellulite appears, we get fat, and so on. It would be great if everyone looked like on the island of Amazons: athletic, smart, running, eating right. Even slender people should play sports and be fit.
Does work somehow affect your self-esteem?
Looking at the shooting at almost perfect girls, who are wildly embarrassed by the camera only because of their internal blocks, you understand how such a critical and unjustified perception of your own body prevents you from living normally. Of course, after that you start to notice more the same problems in yourself and work with them - just as you release the model at the shooting. Photography as a process makes us rethink our attitude towards our own far-fetched imperfection - in fact we are all beautiful, you just need to forget about the barriers, love yourself more and become more harmonious in the end.
Are you the most comfortable on the model site?
I love being photographed, and I love shooting myself, but it's not easy, even though I am pretty. I cannot say that I perfectly know my perspectives, but I have basic preferences. Of course, over the years, my ideas about beauty change - I myself am not skinny and I like fuller, more skater girls just because I want to love myself more. Not that I imposed it on myself, it is a natural process. In addition, everything I read about nutrition says that a healthy person should have the necessary percentage of subcutaneous fat.
Is it difficult to convince a person to give his appearance in the hands of a photographer? Especially considering that we all invented our favorite perspective and successfully exploited it in the selfie.
It is important to be able to communicate with people - to carry away a simple but lively conversation, to laugh before shooting. From this, some girls even shrugged shoulders, because they begin to feel in a comfortable environment for them. But in order to go further, you need to adjust yourself to the necessary mode - you need to be able to fall in love and wind up from the shooting heroine. Intuitively, I came to the point that tactile contact helps a lot. In any case, I touch the girl in the frame - I fix her hair, clothes. The model has a personal space, a personal comfort zone, and I brazenly invade it - in fact, it also makes it more plastic. With men, the same thing. I touch them even more, by the way.
You come to the desire and ability to play naked at the moment when you are completely satisfied with your body
Does a person change a lot by removing clothes?
He looks more sincere. Everyone usually begins to squeeze the shoulders, hide the chest, feel defenseless. We live in Russia, where nudity is not encouraged - there is a taboo on sex, a taboo on nudity. Usually, when I was shooting women naked - not models - it was a gift to her husband. And it was a sincere desire, not for the sake of a man. They wanted to capture their beauty: "I am already 26, in two years I will have a different look, I want to fix it."
I from the same impulses would like to withdraw naked now. Well, when I lose some weight (laughs). You come to the desire and ability to play naked at the moment when you are completely satisfied with your body - it is very scary to show what you yourself consider imperfect. I had a very cool story: I got into the company of a psychologist with my relatives - and then I was wildly embarrassed about my belly, which was plump. How, in principle, and now. I mentioned it once, and the psychologist said - get up on a chair and show your belly. It was literally a year ago, and I could not overcome the barrier and show my belly to five close people I have known for a long time. And the moment I did this, having overpowered myself an hour later, I stopped worrying about this part of my body.
And how do you feel about the “FurFur Girl” section in the magazine that your boyfriend makes (Sasha Skolkov, FURFUR Editor-in-Chief - Ed.), And which, as I understand it, you tried to shoot?
I avoided shooting this rubric because it’s hard for me to sell vulgar sexuality in a girl. Sasha explains that in the erotic survey genre it is interesting to destroy templates, but few of them can. A good example is a very beautiful photograph of Masha Demyanova: it was not vulgar, sensual, and there is a story in it, there is a girl’s personality. The girls take off more gently, it is immediately visible. The guys shoot as porn, using more coarse images - stockings, that's all. Men want a frontal and direct effect, and women want foreplay. When I was shooting this rubric, poorly understanding that it is not necessary to do vulgar pictures, I tried to feel some kind of greasy man in me. I felt as if my eggs had grown hairy. This is not my photo, I do not take it off.
But I am in any case for exposing within acceptable limits. This is the same process of gaining self-love - why not turn it into training? I really want less superficiality in the perception of beauty. So that people can sit naked around the table and absolutely not be embarrassed about it. I am for this hippie approach. This is the path to emancipation, the path to self-love.
To show how the characters see themselves, we invited them to make a self-portrait
The photo: Alina Nikitina