DMYTRO KOMISSARENKO

Photographer / editor / producer and sometimes model – happy to feature an exclusive interview with Ukranian artist, Dmytro Komissarenko and publish his series, ‘Dust’ with Yasha & Nik. Cover photo: Dmytro captured by Ostrovsky @therealostrovskyi

Could we start with some background information about you? Where you grow up, where you based?
I was born in Zaporizhzhia. That period was like middle ages for mankind. Dark and confused… Industrial city in the south-east of Ukraine, where I lived the first 27 years of my life. Or it seemed to me then, or it really was, but any attempts to begin making something in art-sphere found misunderstanding from my friends, close relatives. Waves of desire to start something ran into waves of doubts about themselves and their desires. Then I moved to Dnipro, where I lived for 4 years and where my professional history began, but this was a period of buildup. Moved to Kiev in 2014, where I now live and work now, became the main starting point for me as a photographer. Kiev loved me from the day one and I loved him in return.

How did you get interested in photography?
I remember that in our house there were always cameras. From early childhood, my father took pictures of us, and I took apart cameras and lit up pictures. As I remember now, it was a Kiev-19 camera. Next I had few non-professional cameras. But think about photography as a profession, I began by pure chance. It was the winter of 2008, me and my friend decided that we needed to shoot something strange – dressed her up, took a vacuum cleaner and went into the field to vacuum the snow. Then we put it on a public court in the photographers blog.

Now I understand that it was a complete trash, but I was hooked by one comment, which said that it looks like the work of David LaChapelle.

This comment made me google who is LaChapelle and then everything started. Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber, Peter Lindbergh. Of course, I saw all their works earlier, but did not know their name before that. A bright flash from childhood happened when I discovered Stephen Meisel. It was his pictures of Madonna for the book “Sex” that were kept in my memory from the moment. I bought this book at the age of 8. I needed to hide away from my partents of course!
For two years I took cameras from my friends to practice, and in 2011 I got my first own camera. Then I moved to the Dnipro.

You archive bad boys and pretty angel faced persons too, which one are you more familiar with?
I would say, something in between. My “on duty” type of guys is bad guys with angels faces.

I don’t like bad guys who make themselves up good, and even more I don’t like good guys who make themselves up bad.

Most often, it’s the character’s character that affects my decision. Of course, appearance plays a big role in choosing a model, but this appearance is nothing if there is no character. Everything should be in harmony.
It is also interesting to hide the faces of the models. This is not because someone is embarrassed to be shooted naked. This is in order to maintain a certain intrigue and allow to fantazie.

Do you have a favourite era of fashion?
Late 80s – early 90s – the era of supermodels. I like those types of men/women models. I like fashion and pictures of this era. Seems to me that at that time everything was more real and thanks to this, will never lose its relevance, even in spite of the variability in fashion trends.

What is the best thing to being a photographer?
For me, the best and worst at the same time is meeting people. Communication experience, new stories, emotions. Especially if it’s shooting with musicians. It is one thing to see their performances on stage or videos, and it is another to know them personally, who they are, how they live, how they looks in real life. I like it.
And the difficulty is that each shooting you pass this person through yourself.

It is a very powerful exchange of energy and sometimes, after shooting, I feel empty and broken.

I am very empatic and can easily become infected with someone else’s mood. That’s why for me is very important to create my own mood first and share it with the model.

Does is harder to create, the more series you put out over the years?
I don’t think I ever will burn out. Yes, sometimes I fall into a kind of the depression and don’t want to shoot anything. But we all know that this is a normal situation for a creative person.
Sometimes I want to shoot differently than usual. But as I understand it, my style has already been worked out and if I making portrait, or an illusion to a picture of the Renaissance, my style still the same and it is recognizable. But it’s also true that when I moving away from the usual aesthetics of my style -for the sake of the experiment- that remains just an experiment, but at the end I go back to my style. It’s not consist of difficult productions or images. In general it’s portraits and erotism, with a minimal background and a certain light pattern. I like that all people are different and in my photos I like to give back that difference. It’s hard to get tired of it, even if the shooting takes a lot of energy.

What inspires you?
Me is the one and only inspired source for myself.

Out of yourself, is there any person who inspired you?
It’s not regular situation for me, when I can be inspired by a specific person. I can be inspired by the image of a person which I already created in my head. But for the past two years, Ostrovskyi is a character who most often falls into my camera. We can always experimental with him, I know him well and at the same time he can still surprised me. Of course, many of our experiments will never been published.

What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself as an artist since you started?
Let me answer this question later, in 20 years? For now I have learned that I am not a sociopath and I am able to communicate with people during the shooting. And I still do not understand how this works, but the models often begin to undress in front of me by their own decision.

If you could tell your younger self one piece of advice what would it be?
Don’t listen to anybody! Everything is possible! And if something impossible, you don’t need that.

What do you do when you got time for yourself?
I look at the ceiling. It is a part of my creative process. I visualize ideas, images, desires. At such moments, it’s better not to disturb me.

But you know… do not disturb people during their creative process always a good idea!

Please finish the sentences:
Deeply in love with … Life. I’m in love with life and everything that it included.

Recently I listen … Silence

The last thing what made you happy is … Spring