Shape-Shifting Story

• Photographer
  Natasha Yankelevich

Shape-shift is a topic that has always been close to me. I really understand this concept of finding strength when you become someone else, with different limitations, but also with different possibilities. Were-foxes, Ponyo the Fish, Sirius Black - they all gain new abilities by abandoning their human form and opening their minds to a new paradigm. Shape-shift is something that happens every day: when making difficult decisions, diving into new areas of interest. I believe that any new experience changes us so that we will never be the same. But growth is impossible without shocks?

Photography is usually considered as a way to convey reality but staged photography tells us a different truth. It is the courage to find your point of view on familiar things and to create worlds that momentarily flash with inner magic and tell us their stories. Photography is a bit like cooking: you take ingredients and mix them - color, characters, props, surroundings - and you get a new world with inner strength and secret life.