Mirka Severa

0:08Oh yeah hi good evening my name is Mick Halliwell severa and I'm very happy to be here tonight I'm a photographer based in Amsterdam I'm originally from Germany South Germany as you might hear my accent and tonight I would like to show you a recent project that I created for his chat magazine but first I would like to give you a small insight into the process of my image creation. So that you understand a bit the way how I work.

0:39So I do mostly quite constructed still live images and I really like thinking of ideas for objects and products mostly I work in the field in the commercial field and for me it's like really interesting to start with really like with a sketch first a deer and that I develop into a sketch where. I really start to define the colors to materials to backgrounds and also aspects of an image and in a further process I built that image I do the set design and organize materials and everything.

1:14And in a final stage I'm photographing it so probably you called it and yeah our director set designer and a photographer. And I kind of merged all these fields with my work and just to give you like an idea of how that looks like I will show know shortly two projects so yeah of course the best assignments are the ones we have complete freedom and I had this assignment just to shoot the three fur and leather bags for Nina Ricci and somehow I was like a little bit yeah it was a bit strange when I received the images and I was like I can still see the original of them.

1:59So I thought maybe I want to bring them back to their living space they have once lived in and after doing some research about terrariums and Zeus animal shops I thought maybe I better have to build in my own like to make really custom eight terrariums for each back so after watching some YouTube tutorials I started to build these so you need like sterile and plaster and decorating with breathing holes and these were two finer images so for each back custom a terrarium which is like of course referring a little bit to consumers world we live in kind of a fake product like a product in this world.

2:45So this was kind of a quite complex step design and step from the product to the final image is quite drastic but of course sometimes also just like a simple white plain background it's enough to show an idea best and that was the project that cold sweet dreams which I created for a Dutch magazine called MacGuffin and they had a special issue about baths and asked me to come up with like an idea to shoot mattresses and probably know all these like cut it mattress samples that you can see in yeah that stores a mattress stores with like all these layers and you had a more looked at them somehow they were nearly like on a colored piece of cake so yeah that was actually the idea I created series called sweet dreams which is like mix of met resembles and similar-looking cut a piece of cakes and it's not actually only showing the similarity between these objects but also of course like you know the psychological relationship between eating and sleeping which is something quite essential we all need in life but sometimes too much cake or too much sleep is not good and yeah but just just not showing and I do very simple and once you need a very complex set to show the best sometimes very reduced and sometimes you need a very specific location to show an idea best and yeah probably knows you tortured saito magazine it's Germany's largest magazine it appears weekly and I quite often work for them because give me a lot of freedom and so here they just sent me like a list of certain themes and topic which they need to cover like accessories beauty fragrance and you know one of them was like down jackets and I kind of like this like weird like functional object like mattresses down jackets and yeah it's like next to all professional aspects it's like a very functional object and it's there to protect the body it's made cool areas to keep your body warm and I had to think back being a child wearing this jacket and building snowman and then dressed them like with scarf and Cardinals and yeah and I thought yeah why not building snowmen is models and dress and when winter wear but then like to create like different kind of characters so that everyone has its own story like the happy warm the sporty and explorer and yeah after I post that I did reset magazine I didn't heard back from them for a while so I thought maybe it was too weird but then like and I received an email from the art director Beatrice thymic and she said yeah they really like it.

5:52And we can produce it. And I was really happy but she said yeah but the story has to be has to appear in the November issue so you have to shoot in September and I was like yeah but snow.

6:06So yeah but actually luckily there's hinter took the glacier in Austria which is also accessible during the late summer times but you have to go on top of course. And I've only been on a glacier to go for skiing as a kid which is ages ago but never to build snowman and especially not to spend a couple of hours and talk because usually you drive up and a lift and then you ski down so you don't really experience the weather conditions up there. And I was like but ok let's do it.

6:42So I want to be extra safe and it was a like a fully equipped car and of course I didn't went from my own I went with stylist even bigger and to assistants we drove like all the way from Munich where they accept magazines headquarter is to hint to talks yeah and once we arrived there we took over the whole breakfast room because luckily we're the only guests and defined each outfits for snowman we had to pack smart because going on a glacier means you can't take a crazy amount of stuff with it.

7:18So we really defined ok this office for that snowman and we packed each outfit in the back.

7:23And then the next morning on the way to the gondola we got stuck in a first classic of traffic jam which lead directly to the next one as apparently we weren't the only people going at leisure with the difference that our wish was to build snowman and yeah hi we got the more snow peered and the landscape literally transformed into winter wonderland and then suddenly we found us back on three thousand two hundred fifty meters at about minus 20 degrees yeah that's also what I thought and actually building a snowman up. There is a little bit different as you might do it in for garden or in a park the conditions drastically changed and yeah it's very cold the lytics is extremely bright. I had a two weeks I pain after that because sometimes I took off my glasses it's windy and being four hours in such a high it also means like a lack of oxygen which makes you feel dizzy but you kind of have to ignore all these problems or aspects and because the schedules tight and we only had a few hours per day on the glacier so we really had to Asheville rush because the gondolas only went went to certain hours up and down and and not much time thing of problems which wasn't easy because we constantly to find solution and the first soul man test looked pretty sad and the snow was like super powdery and it was not possible all to build snowman from them. And I panicked a bit.

9:05And I thought oh yeah maybe we should shoot them whole like from top and change the concept and they all lie but apparently there was also the really frozen parts which were actually better in the end so and this was the only way to cut it so after a while like I had this like little Smasher and after while we found good techniques in order to yes not build a snowman efficient and we always had this suitcase with us which was quite important because they were all equipment in it that we need to boost norm and on glacier like stiffing material for the bodies characters this of course Mouse tops I spirits yeah and all the kind of stuff and actually the good thing about snow models is that they never complain they they never freeze so that was nice yeah we had a lot of fun and yeah this was the last probably most dramatic picture we had about 30 minutes left until the last corner I went down. And we also we're the last people there because it was so foggy that nobody went skiing there except us building a snowman and just to get an idea where we are at that moment so this is the glacier this is where we were and here it went like a few thousand meters straight down. And this is where the Snowman had to stand and after finally like setting him up it suddenly became super windy stormy foggy snowy and of course like the most dramatic thing happened Explorer he fell down he lost his hat so we had to fix him on a leash Yvonne is holding on a leash so it was a quite dramatic ending but we managed we managed to go down and after that experiences thought maybe that's how reinhold messner must feel after exploring the Mount Everest but now I'd like to introduce you to all the snow people and after spending so much time with them I even gave them names so this is Reinhold Mariana France he unfortunately had an accident I met China and Viktor and Olga so yes you can see it's a difference building snowman out there. And I really like to explore different materials and really dig into certain topics that I haven't touched before like building a terrarium or a snowman and after riding back at the am stern Airport I suddenly started to receive strange things.

12:06So yeah thank you for attention and have a nice evening [Applause]