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Karin Svadlenak Gomez

LOOKING FOR SOMEONE
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  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | 2023 PHOTOGRAPHERS

    Be inspired by the photographers on the 2023 List. 2023 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Ypatia Kornarou AARON RUBINO San Francisco UNITED STATES ALESSANDRO GIUGNI Milan ITALY ALEX GOTTFRIED BONDER Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA AMY NEWTON McCONNEL Arizona UNITED STATES ANASTASIYA PENTYUKHINA Moscow RUSSIA ANDREE THORPE Ontario CANADA BARBARA PEACOCK Portland UNITED STATES BRANDEN MAY Atlanta, UNITED STATES DARREN SACKS London UNITED KINGDOM DOUG WINTER California UNITED STATES ELSA ARRAIS Leiria PORTUGAL FABIO CATANZARO Venice ITALY GILES ISBELL Chiang Mai, THAILAND IDA DI PASQUALE Rome ITALY JAN PONNET Antwerp BELGIUM JAYESH KUMAR SHARMA Varanasi INDIA JEFF ROTHSTEIN New York UNITED STATES JUAN BARTE Madrid SPAIN JUAN SOSTRE California UNITED STATES KONRAD HELLFEUER Görlitz GERMANY LEANNE STAPLES New York UNITED STATES MENA SAMBIASI Madrid SPAIN MONIKA JURGA POLAND NAIMA HALL New York UNITED STATES NSIRIES Bologna ITALY

  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | 2021 PHOTOGRAPHERS

    Be inspired by the photographers on the 2021 List. 2021 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Meryl Meisler AGATA LO MONACO Gela ITALY ALAN THEXTON Melbourne AUSTRALIA ALEX RUTHERFORD Surrey UNITED KINGDOM ANDRES GONZALEZ Porto PORTUGAL ANDREW ROVENKO Melbourne AUSTRALIA ANDRÉ LOBÃO London UNITED KINGDOM AURÉLIEN BOMY Nantes FRANCE BARRY BOTTOMLEY London UNITED KINGDOM BASTIAN PETER Basel SWITZERLAND BEN ALLAN London UNITED KINGDOM BETTY MANOUSOS Athens GREECE CAMILLE WHEELER Austin UNITED STATES CARLA HENOUD Beirut LEBANON CAROL DRONSFIELD Brooklyn UNITED STATES CHICHEK BAYRAMLY Baku AZERBAIJAN CHRISTINA SIMONS Melbourne AUSTRALIA DAMIEN GORET Brest FRANCE DANIEL GOLDENBERG Buenos Aires ARGENTINA DANIELA PEREIRA Montevideo URUGUAY DANNY JACKSON Essex UNITED KINGDOM DAVID KUGELMAS New Jersey UNITED STATES DAVID LAWLESS Winnipeg CANADA DAVID SHORTLAND London UNITED KINGDOM DREW KELLEY California UNITED STATES EDUARDO ORTIZ Valparaiso CHILE

  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | 2024 PHOTOGRAPHERS

    Be inspired by the photographers on the 2024 List. 2024 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Anna Tut ALEXANDROS ZILOS Athens GREECE AMY HOROWITZ New York UNITED STATES ANA-MARIA ALB Bukovina ROMANIA ANN PETRUCKEVITCH UNITED KINGDOM ANNA TUT Krasnogorsk City RUSSIA CARMEN SOLANA CIRES Madrid SPAIN CATIA MONTAGNA SCOTLAND/ITALY DASHA DARVAJ UMRIGAR Karachi PAKISTAN DEDIPYA BASAK Kolkata INDIA EDWIN CARUNGAY San Francisco UNITED STATES FRANCE LECLERC Chicago UNITED STATES ISABELLE COORDES Münster GERMANY JOHN KAYACAN Los Angeles UNITED STATES JUSTINE GEORGET Lyon FRANCE MARIETTE PATHY ALLEN New York UNITED STATES MATTHIAS GÖDDE Beckum GERMANY MEI SEVA New York UNITED STATES MIA DEPAOLA Washington D.C UNITED STATES NAZANIN DAVARI Tehran IRAN PAUL COOKLIN UNITED KINGDOM PEDRO VIDAL Barcelona SPAIN RAFA ROJAS São Paulo BRAZIL ROMAIN COUDRIER Marseille FRANCE ROWELL B. TIMOTEO La Union PHILIPPINES SASHA IVANOV St. Petersburg RUSSIA

  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | 2022 PHOTOGRAPHERS

    Be inspired by the photographers on the 2022 List. 2022 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Adrian Pelegrin ADRIAN PELEGRIN Playa del Carmen MEXICO AHSANUL HAQUE FAHIM Dhaka, BANGLADESH AJ BERNSTEIN New York UNITED STATES ANWAR EHTESHAM Dhaka BANGLADESH ASEN GEORGIEV Sofia BULGARIA ASLI GONEN Eskisehir TURKEY BRIAN DOUGLAS Ontario CANADA CAHLEEN HUDSON New Taipei City TAIWAN CHETAN VERMA Gurgaon INDIA DEAN GOLDBERG New York UNITED STATES ELIZABETH PAOLETTI UNITED STATES EMIR SEVIM Istanbul TURKEY EMY MAIKE Baden Württemberg GERMANY FRANCESCA TIBONI Cagliari ITALY GABRIEL MIELES GUZMÁN Guayaquil ECUADOR GABRIELE GENTILE Parma ITALY GIANLUCA MORTAROTTI London UNITED KINGDOM GIORGIO GERARDI Venice ITALY JAN ENKELMANN London UNITED KINGDOM JEAN ROSS New York UNITED STATES JELISA PETERSON Texas UNITED STATES JENS F. KRUSE Mallorca SPAIN JONAS WELTEN Salzburg AUSTRIA LAINE MULLALLY Stockholm SWEDEN LELE BISSOLI Vercelli ITALY

  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | 2020 PHOTOGRAPHERS

    Be inspired by the photographers on the 2020 List. 2020 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Abbie Briggs ABBIE BRIGGS Madison UNITED STATES ABHAY PATEL Delhi INDIA ABHISHEK SINGH New Delhi INDIA ADAM SINCLAIR Melbourne AUSTRALIA ADESH GAUR Uttar Pradesh INDIA ADRIAN TAN SINGAPORE ADRIAN WHEAR Melbourne AUSTRALIA AHMET HOJAMYRADOV Minsk BELARUS ALEX FRAYNE Adelaide AUSTRALIA ALEXANDRA AVLONITIS Manhattan UNITED STATES ALEXEY STRECHEN Moscow RUSSIA ALICIA HABER Montevideo URAGUAY ANEEKA MANKU Birmingham UNITED KINGDOM ANGEL CARNICER Zaragoza SPAIN ANNA MARCHIOLI Clamart FRANCE ANNETTE LANG Nice FRANCE ANTONIS GIAKOUMAKIS Athens GREECE ANWAR SADAT Nairobi KENYA ARTURO CAÑEDO Lima PERU ASHISH PATEL Delhi INDIA ASSIA STARKE Vienna AUSTRIA ASTRID NEUNDLINGER Vienna AUSTRIA B JANE LEVINE New York City UNITED STATES BELINDA CORNEY London UNITED KINGDOM BENNY VAN DEN BULKE Adegem BELGIUM

  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | 2025 PHOTOGRAPHERS

    Be inspired by the photographers on the 2025 List. 2025 PHOTOGRAPHERS © Stephanie Duprie Routh ABDULLA SHINOSE CK Malabar INDIA ALEJANDRO DAVILA Pachuca MEXICO ANTON BOU Montreal CANADA AYANAVA SIL Kolkata INDIA BETTY GOH SINGAPORE BUKU SARKAR Paris FRANCE CYNTHIA KARALLA New York UNITED STATES DAVID GRAY New York UNITED STATES EVA MALLIS New York UNITED STATES FANJA HUBERS Utrecht THE NETHERLANDS FUTURE HACKNEY London UNITED KINGDOM GIORDANO SIMONCINI Rome ITALY GUILLERMO FRANCO Córdoba ARGENTINA HIROYUKI ITO New York UNITED STATES JAY HSU Yilan City TAIWAN KAT PUCHOWSKA Barcelona SPAIN LAETITIA HEISLER Berlin GERMANY LUISA MONTAGNA Parma ITALY MASSIMO LUPIDI ITALY MATTEO BERGAMI Bologna ITALY MEERA NERURKAR Düsseldorf GERMANY NASOS KARABELAS Greece ATHENS NICOLA CAPPELLARI Vicenza ITALY PARISA AZADI IRAN & DUBAI PARVATHI KUMAR New Jersey UNITED STATES

  • SERHII FETT | The Pictorial List

    SERHII FETT I grew up in Ukraine, where the contrast between environments and emotional experiences shaped the way I see images. I do not come from a fine art background. Instead, my education has been self-directed through studying photography, contemporary art, philosophy, visual culture, and the work of artists whose practice challenged conventional storytelling. My work explores the fragile boundary between reality and psychological perception through conceptual photography. Rather than documenting the world as it is, I use photography to question memory, identity, absence, and the emotional tensions embedded in everyday life. My visual language is defined by restrained compositions, use of color, and symbolic objects that transform scenes into open-ended narratives. I am interested in images that resist interpretation and invite the viewer to complete the story from their own experience. Alongside my artistic practice, I write about visual culture, conceptual photography, and the evolving relationship between art, technology, and society. LOCATION Münster GERMANY CAMERA/S Hasselblad WEBSITE https://serhiifett.com @SERHIIFETT FEATURES // Contours of Absence

  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | INTERVIEWS

    Talking to photographers from around the world, offering an insight into their photographic journey to inspire us all. WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. INTERVIEW CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. INTERVIEW THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. INTERVIEW WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. INTERVIEW THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. INTERVIEW MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. INTERVIEW THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. INTERVIEW WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. INTERVIEW GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. INTERVIEW WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. INTERVIEW WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE DO Culture lives where art and community meet, and in this space Alejandro Dávila’s photographs reveal the unseen labor and devotion that sustain creation. INTERVIEW ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. INTERVIEW THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. INTERVIEW IT STARTED AS LIGHT…ENDED IN SHIVERS… Between intimacy and estrangement, Anton Bou’s photographs wander — restless fragments of light and shadow, mapping the fragile terrain where self unravels into sensation. INTERVIEW WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. INTERVIEW DIPTYCH DIALOGUES Through the beautiful language of diptychs, Taiwanese photographer Jay Hsu invites us into a world where quiet images speak of memory, resilience, and hope. INTERVIEW UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. INTERVIEW THE PULSE OF THE STREET Moments vanish, yet Suvam Saha holds them still — the pulse of India’s streets captured in fragments of life that will never repeat. INTERVIEW WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. INTERVIEW CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. INTERVIEW STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. INTERVIEW PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. INTERVIEW POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. INTERVIEW QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. INTERVIEW TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity. INTERVIEW THERE MY LITTLE EYES Guillermo Franco’s book is an exploration of seeing beyond the obvious. His work invites us to embrace patience, curiosity, and the unexpected in a world that often rushes past the details.

  • THE PICTORIAL LIST | Building a community of photography

    The Pictorial List is a global online magazine exploring the beauty and complexity of all things photography. CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. Latest features INTERVIEW WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. PICTORIAL STORY REGINA: BOARDING SCHOOL LIFE AND DREAMS A boarding school room becomes the frame for Cleopatra Joint’s portrait of ambition, instability, and a young woman’s search for freedom. PICTORIAL STORY LIFE ALONG THE RIVER Along the Hooghly, Shubhodeep Roy photographs Kolkata through faith, labour and memory, revealing a city shaped by water, inheritance and shared life. PICTORIAL STORY A HOME OF MEMORIES AND THE PRESENT Davide Santangelo returns to his family home by moonlight, tracing how absence, memory, and love continue to live within place, objects, and atmosphere after loss. PICTORIAL STORY THE PULL OF THE EARTH This is more than a record of rural Bengal. It looks at the bond between Sayan Biswas and the place that shaped him, even after distance has changed that relationship. INTERVIEW THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. BOOK TÜRKIYE Rpnunyez offers a thoughtful portrait of a country shaped by history, culture, landscape, architecture, and everyday life. BOOK BETWEEN SEA AND SKY Through walking and flight, Massimo Lupidi reveals Cinque Terre as a landscape shaped by attention, endurance, and the intimate bond between land and human life. INTERVIEW MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. INTERVIEW THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. PICTORIAL STORY ARE THOSE WINDS Along Istanbul’s northern edge, Ci Demi photographs the last water buffalo herders as they keep working, remembering, and staying put while the city closes in. INTERVIEW WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. PICTORIAL STORY COLORS OF HUZUN Through fragments and gestures, Pedro Vidal traces Istanbul as shared melancholy lingers in everyday life, the city unfolding slowly and refusing to settle into a single, definitive understanding. PICTORIAL STORY OUT OF PLAY An exploration of abandoned interiors in which Marco Lugli examines how objects, light, and space carry memory beyond human presence, establishing absence as a condition of material continuity rather than loss. PICTORIAL STORY REIMAGINING TALIESIN Form gives way to flux in Amy Newton-McConnel’s photographs, where architecture unfolds as a field of shifting relations and perception moves with light, geometry, and time. PROSCENIUM GHOSTS Said Manseur honors these young actors, their courage, and the unseen work they give to keep theater alive against the odds. New York, New York! PICTORIAL STORY NYC SUBWAY RIDERS BEFORE THE INVASTION OF SMARTPHONES Hiroyuki Ito’s subway photographs reveal a vanished intimacy. INTERVIEW FABRIC OF NEW YORK VISUALS Elle Clarke lives NYC — snapping its heart and hustle with her smartphone, one real city moment at a time! INTERVIEW NOD OF RECOGNITION B Jane Levine’s portraits give a playful wink — inviting a nod of recognition to the hidden stories we all carry inside. INTERVIEW NEW YORK IMPROVISATIONS Fast-moving, off-kilter, witty, raw and classic film noir define Bill Lacey's photography. PICTORIAL STORY MERMAID MAGIC AJ Bernstein captures the magic of the Mermaid Parade—where fantasy, freedom, and community come together in a sea of color and joy. INTERVIEW GOTHAM MEMORIES Jeff Rothstein clicks, time unfolds — capturing the heart of the city in timeless frames, from 1969 to today. PICTORIAL STORY TAKING THE PLUNGE Carol Dronsfield takes the plunge with the Coney Island’s Polar Bears, capturing the chill, the thrill, and the heart. INTERVIEW THE AUTHENTIC GAZE Amy Horowitz says “Don’t Smile”— and in doing so, captures the real and wonderfully unscripted faces of New York City. VOLUME ONE- NEW YORK BUY NOW join the Pictorial Community >>> Follow us on Instagram #thepictoriallist @thepictorial.list Load More THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. Interviews you may have missed REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE Camille J. Wheeler documents Austin's streets, with a particular focus on its homeless community. COMEDIANS Steve Best documents the British comedy scene, backstage and on stage, the highs and lows, and the joy of being a comedian. QUARANTINE IN QUEENS Neil Kramer's humorous and compassionate lockdown diary has gone viral. ENROUTE TO THE PINES Robert Sherman shares his documentary series about drag queens celebrating the 'Invasion of the Pines'. SERVICE INTERRUPTION Wojciech Karlinski documented Poland train stations during the pandemic, highlighting their formal and aesthetic side. VOICES OF THE NILE Voices of the Nile by Bastien Massa and Arthur Larie is a project documenting the relationship of Ethiopians with the Blue Nile. BREAKS FROM REALITY The magic only dreams are made of become reality for viewers as they engage in the poetic imagery of Mariëtte Aernoudts. BEYOND THE STORY Through her documentary photography, Christina Simons is compelled to tell the stories of those who are unable to do so themselves. © Russell Cobb Media Partners

  • IN CONVERSATION WITH SERHII FETT

    CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. August 23, 2026 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Serhii Fett INTERVIEW Melanie Meggs Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE Conceptual photography relocates the site of meaning. A photograph stops being a record of what stood before the lens and becomes the residue of a process, staging, symbol, performance, withholding. What the frame excludes carries as much weight as what it admits. Serhii Fett works from within that uncertainty. He builds images that test the border between an external event and its psychological residue, treating memory, identity, and absence not as subjects to be illustrated but as pressures that reshape what the eye is permitted to register. His training was self-assembled. Photography sits alongside philosophy, cinema, literature, and architecture in the framework he built for himself, and that framework shows in the precision with which he interrogates his own instincts rather than simply trusting them. Traces of Francesca Woodman, Bill Jacobson, Todd Hido, Rinko Kawauchi, Kumi Oguro, and Masao Yamamoto surface less as visual quotation than as inherited permission, permission to leave a photograph unresolved without leaving it unfinished. The face, in this body of work, is treated as an obstacle rather than a destination. Concealed behind flowers, mirrors, signage, or constructed forms, it stops supplying the viewer with a shortcut to character. What remains, a posture, the angle of a wrist, the distance a body keeps from an object, becomes the more demanding evidence. Identity is not erased so much as relocated, forced to reveal itself through means slower and less certain than a glance at a face. Color operates as an instrument of temperature rather than decoration. It gives these images an immediate clarity of surface even as their underlying situations resist explanation. This split, legible form wrapped around illegible content produces the work's particular unease. A photograph can look playful at first glance and grow colder the longer it is held in view, its humor thinning into something closer to restriction or estrangement. Relocating from Ukraine to Germany has inevitably affected Serhii’s relationship with place and memory, though it is not the explicit subject of the work. Space in his photographs functions primarily as a psychological element. Interiors, landscapes, roads, and ordinary environments shape how the body is perceived and contribute to the tension between presence and absence. Place becomes less a documentary fact than another component in the construction of an internal state. Writing runs parallel to the photographs rather than beneath them, a separate instrument for a related inquiry. It gives Serhii a place to test his own reasoning in language, but it does not exist to complete the pictures. The photographs are asked to hold their tension without a caption's help, and what follows in this conversation is an attempt to trace how that tension gets built, and what Serhii believes a photograph should risk withholding even from its own maker. “The starting point for me is usually not an object or a location, but an internal state. I am interested in experiences that are difficult to describe directly. Photography gives me a way to make those states physical. I construct my photographs rather than simply wait for situations to occur. I can control space, gesture, colour and the position of the body until the external scene begins to carry something psychological. At the same time, I do not want the image to become an illustration of a predetermined idea. It has to retain uncertainty. I am interested in that point where something remains recognisable and physically believable, but its normal logic has been disturbed. The viewer understands what is in front of them, but not necessarily what they are supposed to feel about it. That gap is important to me.” IN CONVERSATION WITH SERHII FETT By frequently concealing the face, your work challenges its conventional authority as the primary marker of identity within portraiture. What first prompted this inquiry, and how has shifting attention toward posture, clothing, gesture, and surrounding objects expanded your understanding of how a person may be represented and perceived? The face is an extremely powerful source of information. As soon as we see it, we begin to form a specific person. We read expressions, age, mood and personality almost automatically. For my work, that can sometimes be too much information. I am usually not interested in creating a portrait of a particular individual. I am interested in the condition that the figure carries. Concealing the face allows me to interrupt that immediate identification and redirect attention toward the body, gesture, clothing, space and objects. Once the face is removed, very small things become more important. The way a person stands, the position of the hands, the tension in the shoulders or the distance between the figure and an object can change the entire psychological reading of the photograph. The figure becomes less biographical, but not necessarily less human. Sometimes the opposite happens. By removing a specific identity, the image creates more space for the viewer to recognise something of their own experience in it. For me, concealment is therefore not about creating mystery for its own sake. It is a way of changing where identity is located within the image. Concealment in your series can occupy a space between protection and erasure. How do collaboration and trust shape these constructed scenes, and how do you preserve the subject’s agency while withholding aspects of their identity? There is an important distinction between concealing someone's identity in an image and treating the person themselves as anonymous during the process. The photographs may remove the face or fragment the body, but there is still a real person physically participating in the construction of the scene. Because of that, trust matters. A pose can be planned, but a body cannot be treated like a completely neutral material. People have their own physical limits and their own way of occupying space. Very small changes in posture can make an image feel completely different. I try to preserve that distinction. The figure may become anonymous for the viewer, but the person making the photograph with me does not disappear from the process. I also do not necessarily see concealment as purely negative. It can suggest disappearance or alienation, but it can also create distance, protection, or resistance. I prefer not to fix which interpretation is correct. That ambiguity is closer to how I think about identity in general: not as something completely stable, but as something that can shift depending on context. As a self-taught artist, can you recall when photography shifted from an interest to become something essential to your life? What changed in the way you saw yourself, and what gave you the conviction to pursue it as a sustained artistic practice? Before I found my direction, I tried many different forms of photography. I photographed weddings and love stories, experimented with documentary and reportage photography, and generally moved through different genres trying to understand what photography could be for me. The turning point came in 2017, when I consciously decided to leave commercial genres behind and concentrate on staged conceptual photography. I realised that I was much more interested in constructing an image than in reacting to a situation that already existed. That changed my relationship with photography completely. The camera stopped being only a tool for recording what was in front of me. It became a way to build a reality in which something internal could become visible. I would not describe it as one dramatic moment when I suddenly decided that I was an artist. It was more a recognition that this was the form in which I wanted to continue thinking. Once I found that direction, one image began to produce another question. That continuity was probably more important than any feeling of certainty. © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett How has self-directed study shaped the critical framework through which you examine your work, and what has it meant to become your own teacher and critic while maintaining independence from the conventions of formal art education? Being self-taught gave me freedom, but it also meant that nobody gave me a structure. I had to construct one myself through looking at photography and other visual art, reading, writing, making work, making mistakes, and gradually understanding what was missing from my own knowledge. One consequence is that I became very interested in analysing why an image works rather than simply deciding whether I like it. I look at composition, gesture, colour, context, visual hierarchy, but also at whether there is actually an idea underneath all of those things. That has also affected the way I judge my own photographs. One of the most useful things I have learned is that effort has no relationship to quality. A photograph can take days to construct and still fail. Another can be very simple and contain exactly what it needs. Being your own critic is difficult because you are emotionally attached to the work. You have to learn to separate the process of making something from the result. For me, independence does not mean rejecting art history, criticism, or other artists. It means being able to learn from them without treating any existing convention as automatically correct. You create work that remains open to interpretation. How do you distinguish productive ambiguity from conceptual uncertainty, and has an unexpected response from a viewer ever prompted you to reconsider your understanding of an image? For me, ambiguity is not the absence of intention. A photograph can remain open while still being very precisely constructed. I may know why the body is positioned in a particular way, why an object is there, or why a certain colour dominates the frame. But I do not need the viewer to reconstruct my reasoning. The distinction is whether the image creates a coherent tension or whether it is simply unclear because the idea has not been resolved. I want to work somewhere between certainty and ambiguity. There should be enough information to hold the image together, but not so much that the viewer is left with only one possible conclusion. No, I cannot point to a specific case where a viewer’s response made me reconsider my own understanding of an image. Francesca Woodman, Bill Jacobson, Todd Hido, Rinko Kawauchi, Kumi Oguro, and Masao Yamamoto have each informed your thinking about photography. How have your encounters with their work expanded your understanding of the medium, and how do these ideas intersect with the questions you pursue within your own practice? I am less interested in adopting another photographer's style than in understanding what their work makes possible. With Francesca Woodman, I was drawn to the unstable relationship between the body, space, presence, and disappearance. Bill Jacobson showed me how uncertainty and the withholding of information can become active rather than simply incomplete. Todd Hido made me think differently about ordinary environments and their ability to carry psychological weight. Rinko Kawauchi demonstrated how attention can transform something everyday without needing to make it spectacular. Masao Yamamoto's work reinforced for me the importance of restraint and the possibility that a small or quiet image can contain a much larger emotional space. With Kumi Oguro, I am particularly interested in the constructed body and in situations that are clearly staged but remain psychologically unresolved. What connects these artists for me is not a single visual style. They all expanded my understanding of how much can remain unsaid in a photograph. That has been very important for my own practice. I want to construct images precisely, but I do not want to close them. Sometimes an image begins with a sentence, a contradiction or a short note. I have ideas that remain as words for a long time before I understand how they could become photographs. You consider writing and image-making to be inseparable within your practice. How do these forms of inquiry interact across the development of a work, and does writing anticipate the image, evolve alongside it, or offer a means of critically interpreting the image afterward? All three can happen. Sometimes an image begins with a sentence, a contradiction or a short note. I have ideas that remain as words for a long time before I understand how they could become photographs. In other cases, the visual idea appears first and I only begin to understand it properly through writing afterward. Writing is useful because it forces me to articulate things that can remain vague while I am working visually. When I try to explain why an image matters to me, I can often see whether there is actually something underneath the visual solution or whether I am simply attracted to the appearance of it. My writing about other artists has the same function. It makes me examine questions of authorship, representation, context and visual language from outside my own work, and then those questions inevitably return to my practice. But I do not think a text should rescue a photograph. If an image only becomes meaningful after a paragraph explains it, something is probably missing from the image. Writing is another way of thinking for me, not a set of instructions for the viewer. As artificial intelligence assumes a greater role in the contemporary world, how do you critically understand its place within photography: as a practical tool, a creative collaborator, or an emerging medium with a distinct identity, and what does each position mean for authorship and photographic practice? I think it is useful to separate these positions rather than treat AI as one single phenomenon. As a practical tool, I see it as another development in the technological history of image-making. Photography has always changed together with its tools. AI can assist with research, previsualization, experimentation, and many parts of the workflow without necessarily changing the authorship of the work. The idea of AI as a collaborator is more complicated. It can introduce something unexpected, and that can affect the direction of an idea. But for me, authorship still lies in intention, selection, rejection and responsibility. The artist decides what enters the work and, just as importantly, what does not. I also think AI-generated imagery is becoming a medium in its own right. I am increasingly unsure whether it is useful to call every synthetic image photography. Photography has traditionally maintained some relationship to something that existed in front of a camera, even when that reality was completely staged. A generated image has a different origin. I do not see that difference as a hierarchy. I think it is simply important to name different media accurately, because each one raises different questions about reality, authorship, and evidence. How does artificial intelligence enter your photographic process, and to what extent does it shape the image from its initial conception through to the final work? I mainly use AI during the development of an idea and for previsualization. Because my photographs are staged, there is often a considerable amount of work between an initial thought and the actual shoot. AI can function like a very fast sketchbook. I can test a composition, a gesture, the relationship between a body and an object, a location or a colour combination before committing to the physical construction of the scene. Interestingly, its greatest value is often not in showing me what works but in showing me what does not. An idea can sound convincing in my head and become completely obvious or artificial once I see a version of it. That allows me to remove a lot before I photograph anything. But I do not want the previsualization to dictate the final image. Once a real body, real light, real space, and real objects enter the process, the situation changes. Physical reality introduces resistance and accidents that are impossible to predict completely. So AI can shape the path toward the photograph, but I do not want it to eliminate that resistance. For me, that is still one of the essential qualities of photography. © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett © Serhii Fett Growing up in Ukraine shaped your awareness of how ordinary surroundings can carry profound emotional meaning. Since relocating to Germany, how have memory and physical distance reframed this early way of seeing, particularly in your photographic exploration of place and belonging? I moved from Ukraine to Germany because of the war. That inevitably changed my relationship with place, but I am careful not to use the war as an explanation for everything I make. What changed very strongly was my awareness of things that had previously seemed completely ordinary. When you live inside a familiar environment, you stop noticing many of its details. Distance changes that. Something as simple as a particular interior, landscape, colour, road or object can suddenly become connected to memory. Living in Germany also made the idea of belonging less fixed for me. You can physically inhabit one place while another continues to exist very strongly in your memory. But I do not want to photograph Ukraine or Germany as geographical subjects. In my work, space is more often a psychological element. A room, a landscape or a road can influence how a body is perceived and change the emotional weight of the image. So physical displacement has certainly affected the way I see, but I am more interested in what it reveals about a person's internal relationship with their surroundings than in turning geography itself into the subject. Looking across the development of your practice, where do you recognize the most significant transformation in yourself, and how has this change shaped the way you understand your work and your identity as an artist? The most important transformation was probably moving from trying different photographic genres to understanding that I wanted to construct images around ideas and internal states. Before that, I was looking for my place inside photography. Once I chose staged conceptual work, I stopped asking which genre a photograph belonged to and became much more concerned with whether every element inside the frame was necessary. That changed the role of almost everything: the body, location, object, gesture, empty space and colour all became deliberate parts of the construction. My relationship with colour has also changed significantly. I do not think of it as decoration or as something that simply makes an image more attractive. It can alter the psychological temperature of a scene. Sometimes the palette is restrained; sometimes colour is very direct. What matters is what it does to the state of the image. I have also become less impressed by technical difficulty for its own sake. A complicated photograph is not necessarily a strong photograph. Increasingly, I am looking for clarity: the minimum number of elements necessary to create a psychological tension without explaining it away. What questions are beginning to occupy you now, and how might they shape the next stage of your work? Looking toward the next stage of your practice, what would you most like to accomplish, and is there anything on the horizon that you would like to share with us? I am becoming increasingly interested in how far a constructed photograph can move away from ordinary reality while remaining psychologically believable. That balance between the real and the invented has always been present in my work, but I feel there is much more to explore there. I am also interested in how little information an image actually needs. How much of a person can be removed before their presence becomes stronger rather than weaker? How can an ordinary object change the psychological meaning of a body without becoming a simple symbol? How can colour carry emotion without becoming decorative? Artificial intelligence adds another layer to these questions because it is changing our relationship with photographic reality itself. As synthetic imagery becomes increasingly convincing, the distinction between something that existed physically and something that was generated becomes more complicated. At the same time, I do not want technology itself to become the subject of everything I make. The central questions remain human for me: identity, alienation, uncertainty, presence, absence and the unstable relationship between what we appear to be and what we experience internally. At this stage, I am less interested in producing more images simply for the sake of production. I want to develop more sustained bodies of work, push the visual language further and make the relationship between individual photographs stronger without taking away their ability to stand on their own. PORTFOLIO WEBSITE INSTAGRAM read more interviews >>> CONTOURS OF ABSENCE Where concealment unsettles recognition and ordinary spaces turn psychological, the photographs of Serhii Fett suspend identity between presence and absence. THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE DO Culture lives where art and community meet, and in this space Alejandro Dávila’s photographs reveal the unseen labor and devotion that sustain creation. ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. IT STARTED AS LIGHT…ENDED IN SHIVERS… Between intimacy and estrangement, Anton Bou’s photographs wander — restless fragments of light and shadow, mapping the fragile terrain where self unravels into sensation. WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. DIPTYCH DIALOGUES Through the beautiful language of diptychs, Taiwanese photographer Jay Hsu invites us into a world where quiet images speak of memory, resilience, and hope. UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. THE PULSE OF THE STREET Moments vanish, yet Suvam Saha holds them still — the pulse of India’s streets captured in fragments of life that will never repeat. WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity. THERE MY LITTLE EYES Guillermo Franco’s book is an exploration of seeing beyond the obvious. His work invites us to embrace patience, curiosity, and the unexpected in a world that often rushes past the details.

  • THE PICTORIAL-LIST | photographers

    We are on a mission to discover new photographers, and the most pictorial and interesting photo stories out there. SPOTLIGHT / SERHII FETT Münster GERMANY AARON RUBINO ABBIE BRIGGS ABDULLA SHINOSE CK ABHAY PATEL ABHISHEK SINGH ADAM SINCLAIR ADESH GAUR ADRIAN PELEGRIN ADRIAN TAN ADRIAN WHEAR AGATA LO MONACO AHMET HOJAMYRADOV AJ BERNSTEIN ALAN THEXTON ALEJANDRO DAVILA ALESSANDRO GIUGNI ALEX FRAYNE ALEX GOTTFRIED BONDER ALEX RUTHERFORD ALEXANDRA AVLONITIS ALEXANDROS ZILOS ALEXEY STRECHEN ALICIA HABER AMY HOROWITZ AMY NEWTON McCONNEL GET ON THE LIST © Ypatia Kornarou

  • IN CONVERSATION WITH LAETITIA HEISLER

    WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. November 9, 2025 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Laetitia Heisler INTERVIEW Melanie Meggs Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE Double exposure has always carried a tension between accident and intention, between the technical error of overlapping frames and the creative act of constructing layered realities. In the analogue practice of French German visual artist Laetitia Heisler, this tension becomes the very site of inquiry. Working with RA-4 color printing, she reclaims the material instability of the medium as both aesthetic strategy and conceptual foundation. Her photographs exist not as fixed records but as mutable encounters, where body, landscape, and memory interlace to form images that hover between representation and apparition. What distinguishes Laetitia’s work is the refusal of resolution. By reloading rolls of film, exposing scenes twice over, and submitting the negative to a process of reinvention in the darkroom, she generates visual spaces where presence and absence are no longer opposed but entangled. What emerges is not simply a double but a third presence, that hovers between representation and abstraction. In these compositions, photography shifts from the evidentiary to the performative, aligning itself more closely with ritual and self-portraiture. Her work is profoundly autobiographical yet resists confession. It is shaped by Laetitia’s interest in the invisible: trauma, desire, menstrual cycles, psychic thresholds, and the body as a living archive. Here, the analogue darkroom functions not only as a site of technical manipulation but as a psychic chamber where shame and silence are reconfigured into visibility. The RA-4 color print becomes less a reproduction than a residue of performance — each manual intervention, distortion, and gesture embedded in the surface of the image. To engage with Laetitia’s photographs is to enter a state of oscillation: between clarity and blur, intimacy and estrangement, recognition and disorientation. They recall the Pictorialism tradition in their embrace of softness and atmosphere, yet they remain insistently contemporary in their politics of feminist self-imaging and their emphasis on process over product. At once fragile and resistant, these works ask us to reconsider what it means to look, to remember, and to inhabit an image. We begin our conversation with Laetitia Heisler — asking what drives her devotion to analogue experimentation, how she approaches the risks and revelations of process, and what it means to transform the personal into shared visual experience. “My practice and my inner life constantly shape one another, but what matters to me just as much is how this devotion reveals another way of relating to time. The darkroom demands slowness, patience, and attentiveness - qualities that are increasingly rare in a fast, efficiency-driven world. Many of my works are self-portraits, so enlarging an image often feels like allowing hidden layers to come into visibility. But beyond the personal, the process itself speaks of a different rhythm of existence, one that values pause, silence, and depth. My daily rhythms naturally mirror this: I gravitate toward the darkroom when I feel the need for solitude and when I want to step out of linear productivity, into a space where time stretches, bends, and transforms with the image.” IN CONVERSATION WITH LAETITIA HEISLER TPL: Your practice is deeply founded in experimentation. What does risk mean to you in the analogue darkroom? Can you recall a moment when failure led to an unexpected breakthrough in your work? LAETITIA: Experimentation is at the core of my practice. With it comes failure, unpredictability, and sometimes even loss. In analogue photography, risk is not only about trying something new without following established rules, but also about accepting that what was once captured on the negative can completely disappear in the darkroom. It accepts losing the control. In some of my experiments, I use unconventional liquids during development, and sometimes this means ruining an entire roll of film. But this loss is part of the point - it challenges material attachment and destabilizes the idea of photography as something fixed or permanent. Failure, repetition, and even destruction become part of the process. For one print, I might use dozens of sheets of paper - not to reach perfection, but to test limits, to see what happens when control slips away. In this sense, the darkroom is less a place of mastery than of negotiation, where the unexpected is allowed to intervene. When I teach analogue double-exposure workshops, I encourage participants to value the one image that works, but equally to pay attention to the many that fail. Each “mistake” opens another possibility. What matters is not the preservation of an image as an object, but the experience of process, of time, and of transformation. TPL: You speak of the darkroom as both sanctuary and laboratory. How do you balance intuition with technical precision when working with film and RA-4 prints? Do you find that one — intuition or precision — dominates at particular stages of your process? LAETITIA: My relationship with the darkroom began with learning the fundamentals. For black-and-white, I trained with Kira Enss at Butz Lab in Hamburg, and I was introduced to RA-4 printing at Stills in Edinburgh with Caroline Douglas. Once I had the technical foundations, I began to deliberately break them. I experiment with the process intuitively, relying on my five senses, often introducing gestures or movements that destabilize precision. For me, precision is never absent. It forms the structure, the framework. One cannot break rules without knowing them. But intuition grows within that framework when I get to know the image after having made a few prints of it. Then, the intuition grows increasingly, and I can completely let go by playing with the enlarger and filters, shifting the image or even bringing physical movement into the process. In this sense, the darkroom becomes both sanctuary and laboratory: a space where discipline and unpredictability constantly negotiate with one another. TPL: Many artists working today are drawn to digital possibilities, yet you remain committed to analogue processes. What does analogue photography offer you that digital cannot? Do you see this commitment as an act of resistance in itself? LAETITIA: I am not against digital tools, I may use them for video or other projects, but I remain deeply committed to analogue processes, mostly because they bring me joy. For me, making art should also carry a sense of play. Screens and social media often make me feel stressed, so analogue photography offers a counterbalance: a material, embodied practice. A real hug cannot be replaced by a lovely message on WhatsApp; in the same way, the physical experience of analogue work cannot be replaced by digital photography. To me, they are both completely different practices. Each having their pros and cons. In the darkroom, all the senses are engaged. My eyes are absorbed by the light produced by the enlarger, my nose is filled with the smell of chemistry, my hands navigate in complete darkness, my ears catch every small sound, even taste is connected to the air I breathe. This sensorial immersion does something to the mind - it grounds. It is comparable to being in a forest, where you are surrounded by air, smells, colors, sounds. I feel that analogue photography brings an anchoring quality, something material and direct, which is increasingly missing in our screen-driven lives. Today it is easy to feel disconnected from our immediate environment; I think that analogue photography is a way of restoring balance between the virtual and the material and that is why so many young people are going back to it. The Eye © Laetitia Heisler The Door 1 © Laetitia Heisler Immersion v2 © Laetitia Heisler The Sleepy Menstruant © Laetitia Heisler Life & Death Bond © Laetitia Heisler Laetitia v3 © Laetitia Heisler Eugénie © Laetitia Heisler So Vulnerable So Alive © Laetitia Heisler Humanoid Vegetalis © Laetitia Heisler At the Wrong Place © Laetitia Heisler TPL: The negative in your work is not an endpoint but a starting point. How do you understand the negative as a living material? Do you ever return to the same negative multiple times, and if so, how does each iteration evolve? LAETITIA: In my practice, the negative is not a sacred object that needs to be enlarged according to conventional codes. For me, the negative is a medium, a point of departure to create images beyond the negative. Each time I return to the same negative - because I often do - something new can emerge. Printing becomes less about reproducing what was captured on film and more about opening possibilities. For me, this reflects the way reality itself operates. Reality is not a single, universal truth but a layered, shifting field - something that cannot be fully pinned down. By working the same negative again and again, with different tones, gestures, and movements, I want to make visible that multiplicity. The negative is alive because it carries within its infinite potential versions, just as reality is never one-dimensional but always in flux. This way, a single image may exist in different variations within the same edition — for example, print 1/7 might differ from print 2/7, even though they originate from the same negative. TPL: Your self-portraits are performative and serve primarily as a way to externalize your subconscious and move beyond the psychological dissociation you have experienced. How do you navigate the boundary between self-exposure and self-protection? Are there aspects of your life or body you intentionally keep outside of your work? LAETITIA: If there were things I intentionally kept outside my work, I certainly wouldn’t announce them. What matters to me in self-portraiture is not self-exposure for its own sake, but rather the act of questioning the viewer. For instance, in my series Ce que je ne veux pas dire, composed entirely of self-portraits, I use mirror passe-partouts to underline that what the viewer sees of me is ultimately a reflection of themselves and at the same time, the mirror serves as a form of protection, a way to shield parts of me while redirecting the gaze back onto the spectator. I resonate deeply with Francesca Woodman’s statement, “You cannot see me from where I see myself” (Francesca Woodman, 1958–1981). Of course, self-portraiture also serves me personally, but what it generates within me remains private. By showing these works, I am less concerned with revealing myself than with evoking what the human psyche so often endures in silence: fragmentation, vulnerability, multiplicity. It is, in fact, a claim for authenticity, for daring to truly look at ourselves rather than remaining in sterile relations. What interests me in self-portrait is not confession but resonance: creating images that become a mirror for collective inner experiences. To me, art is about opening a space where we might ask how we are really doing, what remains hidden, and how those hidden aspects might be acknowledged. TPL: Your images engage with trauma, desire, menstrual cycles, shame, and silence — subjects often erased from visual culture. What does it mean for you to make them visible through photography? Has working with these themes changed how you relate to your own body? LAETITIA: Engaging with these themes has inevitably reshaped the way I relate to my own body and experiences. Take menstruation, for instance: like many menstruating people, I have endured both physical and psychological pain around it. But since menstrual blood has become a medium in my practice, whether through double exposures or by immersing negatives in it for 24 hours before development, my perception has shifted. I now anticipate my cycle not only as a physical event, but as an opportunity for my artistic practice. It transforms something often silenced or stigmatized into material for expression. Imagine if everybody would see menstrual blood as an opportunity! Making such subjects visible is not about provocation; it’s about dismantling taboos and expanding what we allow ourselves to see. Photography, for me, becomes a tool to re-inscribe these embodied experiences into visual culture, where they have long been erased. This process does not only alter my relationship to my own body but also asks viewers to confront aspects of their humanity often kept in the shadows: vulnerability, shame, cycles, desires. It is an invitation to acknowledge that these dimensions exist, to engage with them rather than turning away. And if some viewers feel discomfort when confronted with images addressing menstruation or trauma, then perhaps that discomfort itself should be questioned - why does it arise, and what does it reveal about the structures that shape our collective gaze? TPL: You’ve mentioned affinities with early pictorialism. How do you reconcile that tradition’s romantic atmosphere with your more contemporary, political concerns? Are there specific Pictorialism photographers whose work resonates with you today? LAETITIA: What draws me to early pictorialism is not so much its stylistic nostalgia, but its insistence on photography as an expressive, interpretive medium rather than a neutral reproduction of reality. Like the Pictorialists, I am interested in how an image can evoke emotion, atmosphere, or even ambiguity, rather than simply documenting the visible. Photographers such as Robert Demachy or René Le Bègue, with their emphasis on material interventions, remind me that the photographic image has always been open to manipulation, to being shaped as much by the hand as by the lens. Anne Brigman also resonates strongly with me: her use of the female body in dialogue with nature feels like an early feminist gesture, embedding subjectivity and lived experience directly into the image. Other figures also inspire me, not strictly pictorialism but adjacent, like Claude Cahun or Francesca Woodman. For me, these references are less about emulating a style than about situating myself within a history of artists who used photography as a space for transformation where process, emotion, and vulnerability outweigh clarity or control. TPL: Your work asks viewers to reconsider what it means to look and to inhabit an image. What do you hope stays with someone after encountering your photographs? Do you think of your photographs as conversations that continue long after they leave the darkroom? LAETITIA: What I hope lingers after someone encounters my work is not so much a fixed image, but a shift in perception, a question that stays with them. My photographs are less about offering answers than about creating space for introspection. If they provoke viewers to look inward, to reconsider how they see themselves and the world around them, then the work has fulfilled its role. I do think of photographs as conversations, but not in a didactic way. They are open-ended exchanges that unfold over time, sometimes resurfacing in unexpected moments. The darkroom may be where the image begins, but it only comes alive once it is carried into someone’s inner landscape, where it can continue to resonate, disturb, or even transform. 10 Years Still You © Laetitia Heisler The Door 5 © Laetitia Heisler Retenue Par La Chaise © Laetitia Heisler Holy Place v1 © Laetitia Heisler Desire © Laetitia Heisler Elegant Sabotage © Laetitia Heisler Forest Is My Temple © Laetitia Heisler Not A Flower © Laetitia Heisler Lost in Fantasy © Laetitia Heisler Hope © Laetitia Heisler TPL: Photography has long been tied to evidence and truth. How do you see your practice challenging these conventions, particularly as a feminist intervention? Do you feel your photographs argue for a new kind of truth — one that is fluid, embodied, and multiple? LAETITIA: My work, especially through multiple exposures, seeks to challenge the conditioning we inherit around the visible by layering, fragmenting, and reconfiguring it. I work only with tangible elements from my immediate surroundings - objects, textures, organic materials - to emphasize that what we perceive as “real” is always filtered through perspective, always multiple. In this sense, my practice resonates with Alexandra David-Néel, who explored what lies beyond appearances. She once wrote: “Truth learned from others is worthless. Only the truth we discover ourselves counts, only it is effective.” This does not mean rejecting facts or science but rather acknowledging that truth becomes transformative only when it is experienced directly. For me, the darkroom is precisely such a site: a place where the visible can be encountered in its instability, through experimentation and the senses. Even a single negative can unfold into endless variations. Working through sight, touch, smell, even sound, is what allows me to connect more deeply to the material world around me. This is also why I integrate menstrual blood into my work - whether by photographing it or incorporating it into the chemistry. It is both a way of entering into real contact with my body, through all senses, and a radical feminist gesture of reclaiming what has so often been silenced or erased from visual culture. In this way, photography becomes not about fixing one singular reality on an image, but about the process and about revealing that reality is embodied, fluid, and always uniquely experienced by each observer. TPL: As you look toward the future of your artistic practice, what types of projects are you currently considering, and how do you envision these endeavors evolving over the next 3 to 5 years? Are there specific themes or issues you feel compelled to explore more deeply, and how do you see your style or approach transforming as you continue to grow as an artist? LAETITIA: At the moment, I am pursuing several projects that continue to expand the relationship between body, psyche, and image. One ongoing research focuses on menstrual blood in photography, not only as a subject but as a material in itself. Alongside this, I am developing a large-scale installation composed of around 350 instant photographs taken over five years, exploring dissociation and the complexities of mental reaction to trauma. I am also framing my series Ce que je ne veux pas dire, a body of double exposed self-portraits printed in the darkroom and presented with mirrored passe-partouts. For me, the mirror reframes the self-portrait as a relational image: the viewer is confronted with their own reflection. It shifts the vision of the self-portrait - although I appear in the image, it cannot be reduced to knowing me. What the viewer ultimately sees is filtered through their own eyes, their own experience. In parallel to my darkroom practice, I am beginning to integrate sculptural work into my practice, extending my exploration of materiality beyond the photographic print. These new directions allow me to deepen questions of embodiment, vulnerability, and the multiplicity of realities. Over the next years, I see my practice evolving toward immersive forms, where image, object, and viewer coexist in spaces that do not simply present a work, but create an experience. My aim is to engage the spectator in a way that challenges both perception and intimacy, making it evident that the work is not complete without their presence. TPL: When you’re not behind the camera or in the darkroom, what fun adventures or creative pursuits would we find Laetitia diving into? LAETITIA: I’ve always been immersed in art in one form or another. Before photography, I was a dancer and later a musician, playing in a band for several years in my youth. Music still matters deeply to me - especially underground scenes. It keeps me connected to raw energy. When I do self-portraits, I always listen to John Lennon or Brian Jonestown Massacre. At the same time, I read, write, and draw a lot. Also, psychology fascinates me. I even enjoy staying in therapy as a way of continuing to explore the human psyche. Eastern philosophies, particularly from India, have also deeply influenced the way I live and work. I’ve been there to study meditation, ayurveda and know I am learning to speak Hindi. And of course, being on the road, walking endlessly through forests or wandering cities is something that makes me feel very alive. I also like to dive underwater, looking at fishes. Those underwater explorations, just like walking or traveling, are part of the adventures that feed my imagination. PORTFOLIO WEBSITE INSTAGRAM read more interviews >>> THE ART OF ATTENTION Curiosity turns portraits, objects, and places into discoveries as Len Irish reflects on a life shaped by the camera’s attention. WHERE EMOTIONS BREATHE Simple encounters Irina Sedletskaya almost missed become photographs shaped by silence, distance, uncertainty, memory, hope, and resilience. THE VILLAGE A workers’ neighbourhood becomes a living archive as Virginia Cassano photographs the people, streets, and memories that continue to shape Villaggio Piaggio. MUTABLE MORPHOGENESIS By merging scientific methodologies with photographic experimentation, Emma Varga creates images that challenge fixed distinctions between human and non-human, visible and invisible. THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Chad Coombs’ Polaroids are small psychological scenes where identity, memory, culture, and belief push against each other. WHERE WE BELONG Community storytelling lies at the heart of The Pictorial List’s mission, and Marlon Ramos’ photographs reflects the spirit of the place we now call home. GUIDED BY A WHISPER Guided by reflection and the quiet presence of art history, Isolda Fabregat Sanz makes photographs that resist certainty and invite the viewer to remain inside the act of looking. WHAT REMAINS, WHAT EMERGES Laetitia Heisler transforms risk, memory, and the body into layered analogue visions — feminist rituals of seeing that reveal what endures, and what quietly emerges beyond visibility. WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE DO Culture lives where art and community meet, and in this space Alejandro Dávila’s photographs reveal the unseen labor and devotion that sustain creation. ANALOGICAL LIMBO Nicola Cappellari reminds us that the photograph’s power lies not in what it shows, but in what it leaves unsaid. THREADS OF MOROCCAN LIFE Through gestures of work and moments of community, Kat Puchowska reveals Morocco’s overlooked beauty. IT STARTED AS LIGHT…ENDED IN SHIVERS… Between intimacy and estrangement, Anton Bou’s photographs wander — restless fragments of light and shadow, mapping the fragile terrain where self unravels into sensation. WITH EYES THAT LISTEN AND A HEART THAT SEES For decades, Rivka Shifman Katvan has documented the unseen backstage world of Broadway, capturing authenticity where performance and humanity intersect. DIPTYCH DIALOGUES Through the beautiful language of diptychs, Taiwanese photographer Jay Hsu invites us into a world where quiet images speak of memory, resilience, and hope. UNKNOWN ABYSSINIA In Ethiopia, Sebastian Piatek found a new way of seeing — where architecture endures, but women in motion carry the narrative forward. THE PULSE OF THE STREET Moments vanish, yet Suvam Saha holds them still — the pulse of India’s streets captured in fragments of life that will never repeat. WHAT DO WE WANT? More than documentation, David Gray reveals the human pulse of resistance and asks us to see beyond the surface of unrest. CRACKED RIBS 2016 Cynthia Karalla opens up about the art of survival, the power of perspective, and why she believes each of us holds a monopoly on our own narrative. STREETS OF KOLKATA Ayanava Sil’s reveals Kolkata’s soul, capturing moments with empathy, presence and humility while offering deep insight into both city and self. PERIPHERAL PLACES A project by Catia Montagna that distills fleeting encounters and spatial poetics into triptychs - visual short stories that capture the in-between, where meaning often hides. POINTE-AU-CHIEN IS NOT DEAD Through Wayan Barre’s documentary, we are invited not only to see but to feel the lived realities of a community standing at the crossroads of environmental collapse and cultural survival. QUEER HAPPENED HERE Author Marc Zinaman sheds light on the valuable contributions that LGBTQ+ individuals have made to the cultural and social fabric of New York City. TRACES OF TIME Marked by an ongoing visual dialogue with time, memory, and impermanence, Zamin Jafarov’s long-term projects highlight the quiet power of observation and the emotional depth of simplicity. THERE MY LITTLE EYES Guillermo Franco’s book is an exploration of seeing beyond the obvious. His work invites us to embrace patience, curiosity, and the unexpected in a world that often rushes past the details. VISUAL HEALING BEYOND THE DIAGNOSIS Betty Goh’s photography exemplifies the transformative power of visual storytelling, where personal adversity becomes a canvas for resilience, illuminating the connection between art, healing, and self-reclamation.

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