Behind the Lens: Kristina Shakht
June 1st, 2022
Interview by Kate Neave @katylovesart
Continuing our series Behind the Lens, photographer-to-watch Kristina Shakht speaks to arts writer Kate Neave, revealing the stories behind 5 key images from her artist portfolio.
I can’t recall how I first came across Kristina Shakht’s compelling photography practice but once I had begun to explore her raw and tender imagery I knew I’d never forget it. The New York based artist works between high fashion and fine art and she’s already been published in i-D, AnOther and Dazed.
Often working with a Polaroid camera, her photography completely reframes the female body. Shakht creates very intimate portraits that feel like a celebration of womanhood. As a sexual assault survivor herself, struggling with an eating disorder, creating imagery of the human body that is distinct from the typical media perspective is a very personal and meaningful endeavour. Shakht shoots different women, different races and different bodies, celebrating the human being in front of the camera. She creates the imagery she finds is lacking, an imagery she can relate to.
Here, Shakht gives us a candid look behind the scenes of her fascinating photography practice revealing how she makes her vision a reality.
1) From the Beware Witches series X Office Magazine
I'm Russian-American and I grew up in Russia between the ages of four and twenty-four. I’m very inspired by the folklore I heard in that period - the fairy tales and the kind of mysterious beautiful female creatures that are in the stories. The folktales have such a universal language that has been carried through the centuries and I’m just trying to capture their essence. I want to represent the feelings they conjure.
I wasn’t thinking of it at the time but now I’m looking back at this image I’m realising that this pose relates so closely to the Swan Princess. The model’s wearing a full length veil and it’s resting in a way that recalls this story about a swan that turns into a princess.
2) From the Intimacy of Loneliness series X Office Magazine
This photo is from October 2020 which was the first time I worked with Polaroid as a format for a story feature.
I just had this image in my head of long, long hair and after that, I started working a lot with hair and became obsessed with the idea of super long hair. We were on a small budget and we put the hair together out of five $15 wigs.
We shot the images on my friend’s rooftop the day before she moved our of her apartment. I had a really a specific storyboard that I put together before the shoot with the posing and how I wanted it to look but we were tweaking a lot while we were shooting.
We only took 16 shots on Polaroid to make the whole story and 14 out of 16 images ended up working honestly, really great.
3) Untitled
This image is a Polaroid that has multiple exposure. The whole story was about the female body as an art object.
We had a make-up absence so each girl had a different colour - someone had cheeks someone had eyes, someone had lips. This is one of my favourite images because it represents such duality, but it's kind of duality that’s very similar, it’s different angles of the same thing.
“This is one of my favourite images because it represents such duality, but it’s kind of duality that’s very similar, it’s different angles of the same thing.”
I love shooting on Polaroid and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it look as cool as possible. Sometimes you can get this amazing blue colour or green which is a bit of a miracle for Polaroid. It takes a lot of understanding of the light. For six months over the winter last year I was just shooting on Polaroid and because it's low light you kind of start figuring it out really fast.
4) Untitled
The process of taking photographs is so important to me. During the shoots I try to make it feel like we're just hanging out. This girl, Charlotte is actually from Brighton, she came to New York for a month and she found me herself somehow.
We met and we had a beautiful, cool shoot. There were moments when we would just talk and she would be just sitting in her underwear flipping through the book and I caught myself thinking, ‘Wow, she is feeling so comfortable with herself around me’. And we're talking about female photographers and art and womanhood in general and what we want to do creatively. She was feeling relaxed and not threatened in any way. That’s the feeling I want to bring.
“I caught myself thinking, ‘Wow, she is feeling so comfortable with herself around me’. ”
5) From the Bewitched photo essay X WUL Magazine
This diptych was taken in December 2020, actually this is the girl whose rooftop we were on in the earlier shoot. For this one, we were just doing different hairs on her, trying out two or three different variations. I think it was the first time when I worked with the body without clothes. I was trying to make it very sensual in terms of tones and posing and very natural.
It reminds me of a shoot I had two weeks ago. We were trying to choose the hair for the model and I asked her, ‘What do you think?’ And she was like, ‘I don't know. No one ever asked me.’ It felt like someone stabbed me with a knife because I was thinking, ‘What do you mean that no one ever asked you?’ I feel like people don’t give models enough credit.
They are your inspiration and your co-collaborator. It’s crazy that we’re so used to treating models as a prop, forgetting that a model is a human being that can be a creative part of the process. It blows my mind how women are treated in this industry.
“I’m very inspired by the folklore I heard in that period - the fairy tales and the kind of mysterious beautiful female creatures that are in the stories.”
About Kristina Shakht
Kristina Shakht (born 1995 in Saint-Petersburg, Russia) is a New York-based fashion photographer and creative director.
Kristina has worked with i-D, Dazed, AnOther, NY Times, Office, Elle Mexico, Puss Puss, Lampoon, Teeth, Hunger, Calvert, WÜL, Jane by The Grey Attic, The Blueprint, WRPD, Phosphenes, Lula Japan, Complex, BE-IN, Lomography, Mall.nyc, softandwet, The Break. Her photography was showcased by Aperture Foundation and Rockefeller Center in Flag Project exhibition (NYC, USA) and also in Memories, The Essential, The Performer, The Man and The Machine, Contrasts and Inspired by Words exhibitions, curated by Loosen Art Gallery (Rome, Italy).
Kristina is a part of selection for 30 under 30 Women Photographers 2022 by Artpil. Shakht’s first self-published zine To Be or To Become brings together portraits of women, as well as beautiful floral photography, taken between 2020 and 2021 on Polaroid600, 35 mm film and iPhone.