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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.

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.

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.

I am a Melbourne based photographer specialising in street. Always on the hunt for strong composition elements, rich (but sparing) use of colour and deep shadows to create mood and tell stories. I love to show the wonderful City of Melbourne, Australia, in new ways that will surprise and intrigue. ADAM SINCLAIR I am a Melbourne based photographer specialising in street. Always on the hunt for strong composition elements, rich (but sparing) use of colour and deep shadows to create mood and tell stories. I love to show the wonderful City of Melbourne, Australia, in new ways that will surprise and intrigue. LOCATION Melbourne AUSTRALIA CAMERA/S Fuji XT30 @_ALIGHTFANTASTIC_ FEATURES // A Light Fantastic

Photography taught me to ask myself which is the reality, where it is and whether it exists. I conflated early the illusion that I take pictures of reality. So, I started studying the frame and my aim was to understand the content. I concluded in endless ascertainments, I tore them inside and some other times outside. In time I realized that everything I allowed to enter in my field of vision was the “signified” of my existence. The composition of a picture is everything that does not appear or exists in the photographer’s soul when she takes a shot. A picture cannot exist if it has nothing to say and the photographer exists because she can communicate pictures. In this point there exists a tiny deception from the picture’s view: “it promises reality” just like it happens in illusive love when “it promises the ideal”. The photographer does not use words, he/she uses the frame for communication. She does not possess reality, not even her own reality but, for sure, she is not contained in what she imprints with the camera. Every shooting resembles a search. The difference is that the photographer dives into the unconscious. YPATIA KORNAROU Photography taught me to ask myself which is the reality, where it is and whether it exists. I conflated early the illusion that I take pictures of reality. So, I started studying the frame and my aim was to understand the content. I concluded in endless ascertainments, I tore them inside and some other times outside. In time I realized that everything I allowed to enter in my field of vision was the “signified” of my existence. The composition of a picture is everything that does not appear or exists in the photographer’s soul when she takes a shot. A picture cannot exist if it has nothing to say and the photographer exists because she can communicate pictures. In this point there exists a tiny deception from the picture’s view: “it promises reality” just like it happens in illusive love when “it promises the ideal”. The photographer does not use words, he/she uses the frame for communication. She does not possess reality, not even her own reality but, for sure, she is not contained in what she imprints with the camera. Every shooting resembles a search. The difference is that the photographer dives into the unconscious. LOCATION Athens GREECE CAMERA/S Nikon D600 WEBSITE https://ypatiakornarou.gr @YPATIA_KORNAROU @PHOTOYPATIA FEATURES // Photography And Reality

I am a natural-light, self taught photographer who feels the creative process is pure joy. My approach to photography is to be mindful of myself and the world around me, searching for the just right expression of some feeling or emotion. I am interested in the simple beauty of everyday life moments, capturing what my eyes can see and, most importantly, how I feel about them. ‘Home’ is a visual exploration of memory, loneliness, and the quiet search for belonging. Through images that trace both physical and emotional landscapes, this work reflects on transformation, self-discovery, and the idea that home is not a place, but something we carry within. REGINA MELO I am a natural-light, self taught photographer who feels the creative process is pure joy. My approach to photography is to be mindful of myself and the world around me, searching for the just right expression of some feeling or emotion. I am interested in the simple beauty of everyday life moments, capturing what my eyes can see and, most importantly, how I feel about them. ‘Home’ is a visual exploration of memory, loneliness, and the quiet search for belonging. Through images that trace both physical and emotional landscapes, this work reflects on transformation, self-discovery, and the idea that home is not a place, but something we carry within. LOCATION Connecticut UNITED STATES CAMERA/S Canon 6D Mark II, Fuji XT-5 WEBSITE https://reginamelophotography.com/ @GIGI_A_MELO FEATURES // Whispers

A LIGHT FANTASTIC Photographer Adam Sinclair shows his love for his home city of Melbourne with the use of strong compositions, contrasts and rich colours. A LIGHT FANTASTIC March 30, 2020 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Adam Sinclair INTERVIEW Melanie Meggs Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE Adam Sinclair is a Melbourne based photographer whose arresting street photography captures the vibrancy and culture of the city in captivatingly creative ways. Throughout his works, he skillfully employs intense colors and deep shadows to craft mesmerising compositions that evoke strong emotions and tells a story. Evocative, enigmatic, and full of surprises, Adam's photographs bring to life the streets of Melbourne, inviting viewers on an exploration of the city like never before. With a passion for capturing the underlying beauty and spirit of his hometown, Adam has become renowned for his captivating photographic artistry that captures the essence of the city in a unique and unforgettable way. “I started in black and white doing mostly street portraits and reportage. Now I look for strong composition elements, fascinating humans and great colours of course!” IN CONVERSATION WITH ADAM SINCLAIR THE PICTORIAL LIST: Adam, please tell us when the spark started for photography? ADAM SINCLAIR: Some friends bought me a photo book about Henri Cartier Bresson ten years ago, so I spent the next several years with a camera being awful. Though I didn’t really get into street photography until October 2019. TPL: Where do you find your inspiration? AS: I love the colours and textures of urban centres. So many unintentionally beautiful scenes! Also fashion for me is a huge inspiration, I find it endlessly amazing looking at what people wear, and how they wear it. TPL: Do you have any favourite artists or photographers you would like to share with us, and the reason for their significance? AS: I adore Saul Leiter especially ‘Early Color’. He was mostly responsible for my transition from black and white to colour. And my talented friends on Instagram are a daily dose of inspiration. (they know who they are!) TPL: Where is your favourite place to shoot? AS: My home town of Melbourne inspires me always. I think doing street made me fall in love with the place all over again. TPL: Do you think equipment is important in achieving your vision in your photography? What would you say to someone just starting out? AS: No. Some of my favourite images have been shot on a phone. I think vision and a keen eye for detail, shape, line, texture, light and shadow are the most important. I would say…just go and shoot! We can’t improve if we don’t press the button! Everything I know, I know from asking questions. - Socrates TPL: What characteristics do you think you need to become a good photographer? What’s your tips or advice for someone in your genre? AS: Curiosity. Fascination. Patience… And a love of people! Oh, and a dash of confidence for good measure. TPL: Have you ever been involved in the artistic world before photography? AS: Yes, I spent some time as a designer in my much younger years. I’m also a singer. TPL: Are there any special projects you are currently working on that you would like to let everyone know about? AS: My website ‘Indistreet’ is my current project that will be an amalgamation of photography, short stories and a store, should people ever want something for an empty wall. Watch this space. TPL: "If I wasn't photographing what would I be doing?... AS: Hmm, probably singing under a bridge somewhere by the river collecting meagre donations haha!" PORTFOLIO 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.

I find immense fascination in the everyday tapestry of life, where I uncover meaningful narratives by borrowing expressions from those around me, capturing raw and unscripted moments. Then, I stumbled upon the art of street photography. With my camera as an extension of my vision and my motivation to observe, I weave stories from chance encounters, blending them with the extraordinary photographic experiences born of happenstance. Despite my daily eight-hour work schedule, my day job and my passion for street photography have found a harmonious coexistence. Street photography infuses vibrancy into my ordinary existence. The more I immerse myself in the craft, the better I become as a person, even in navigating the day-to-day decisions at work. It serves as a wellspring of inspiration, propelling my growth and improvement. ROWELL B. TIMOTEO I find immense fascination in the everyday tapestry of life, where I uncover meaningful narratives by borrowing expressions from those around me, capturing raw and unscripted moments. Then, I stumbled upon the art of street photography. With my camera as an extension of my vision and my motivation to observe, I weave stories from chance encounters, blending them with the extraordinary photographic experiences born of happenstance. Despite my daily eight-hour work schedule, my day job and my passion for street photography have found a harmonious coexistence. Street photography infuses vibrancy into my ordinary existence. The more I immerse myself in the craft, the better I become as a person, even in navigating the day-to-day decisions at work. It serves as a wellspring of inspiration, propelling my growth and improvement. LOCATION La Union PHILIPPINES CAMERA/S Fuji Xpro2, Fuji XA3, Realme 6 pro smartphone @ROWELLTIMOTEO @ROWELL.TIMOTEO.7 FEATURES // Urban Echoes

MARLON RAMOS I was born in Honduras and raised in Newburgh. I spent my early years with my grandparents, who instilled in me the importance of a person’s character and their word. After coming to America, I learned quickly what responsibility meant and what it was to grow up fast. Questions of identity and belonging have stayed with me ever since. During college, while studying Business Administration and Accounting, I found myself drawn to the world around me, often thinking about photography. After graduating, I used my graduation money to buy my first camera. Years later, stepping away from a corporate career gave me the space to fully commit to that instinct and to begin looking more closely at my surroundings. I am self-taught, and the work of W. Eugene Smith and Daido Moriyama shaped my understanding of long-term commitment and visual language. I work primarily in black and white to reduce distraction and focus on what is essential. My practice is grounded in observation and return. I revisit the same places, watching how people move through them and how meaning develops over time. Through this, I explore ideas of home, routine, culture, and the ongoing question of where I belong. LOCATION New York UNITED STATES CAMERA/S Fujifilm X-E2, Fujifilm XT3 @MARLON_LIGHT_SENSITIVE FEATURES // Where We Belong

Ever since I remember myself I loved photography. In school I was the class photographer. Later on my subjects were my family and the countries where I lived or travelled to. I have a Masters Degree in psychology and I later studied photography. My Aesthetics of Photography professor, Laura Dodson @lauradodsonphoto, always professed, ‘don’t photograph babies, pretty young girls or sunsets, as these subjects are beautiful in themselves and you don’t need to make any effort or put any thought into capturing them. Also, Laura encouraged me to exhibit during my studies and I never stopped since. I usually make a book to complement my exhibition. From the eight books that I have published, three were published for special events and the rest accompanied my exhibitions. My last book, ‘Casablanca’, was published for the exhibition of the same name at Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens. I contributed my photos for the book ‘Quartier Réservé’ or ‘Red light District’ under the direction of Jean-Francois Stazsak and Raphaël Pieroni, which was done for an exhibition scheduled for April 2019 in Casablanca and later in Geneva but was postponed indefinitely because of the pandemic. In Casablanca I belong to an association called Casamemoire, which was created to safeguard of Casablanca’s heritage. In 2015 I photographed Casablanca as our goal was to include Casablanca’s twentieth century architecture among the World Heritage Sites. I also photographed the interior of the buildings, which gave me the opportunity to talk to people, to get acquainted with their everyday lives and understand the reasons why they effected changes in the buildings. This experience was beneficial in helping me overcome my apprehension and shyness when asking people on the street if I could take a picture of them. I am a people photographer and I tried to include pictures of people in the architectural photos as much as possible, which was what the UNESCO committee really liked. A couple of years ago I started posting pictures on Instagram. I enjoy it but find it involves much more effort than I expected, and leaves little time for my other photographic activities. I am grateful to Sean Tucker who through his YouTube channel, helped me put Instagram into perspective. MELITA VANGELATOU Ever since I remember myself I loved photography. In school I was the class photographer. Later on my subjects were my family and the countries where I lived or travelled to. I have a Masters Degree in psychology and I later studied photography. My Aesthetics of Photography professor, Laura Dodson @lauradodsonphoto, always professed, ‘don’t photograph babies, pretty young girls or sunsets, as these subjects are beautiful in themselves and you don’t need to make any effort or put any thought into capturing them. Also, Laura encouraged me to exhibit during my studies and I never stopped since. I usually make a book to complement my exhibition. From the eight books that I have published, three were published for special events and the rest accompanied my exhibitions. My last book, ‘Casablanca’, was published for the exhibition of the same name at Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens. I contributed my photos for the book ‘Quartier Réservé’ or ‘Red light District’ under the direction of Jean-Francois Stazsak and Raphaël Pieroni, which was done for an exhibition scheduled for April 2019 in Casablanca and later in Geneva but was postponed indefinitely because of the pandemic. In Casablanca I belong to an association called Casamemoire, which was created to safeguard of Casablanca’s heritage. In 2015 I photographed Casablanca as our goal was to include Casablanca’s twentieth century architecture among the World Heritage Sites. I also photographed the interior of the buildings, which gave me the opportunity to talk to people, to get acquainted with their everyday lives and understand the reasons why they effected changes in the buildings. This experience was beneficial in helping me overcome my apprehension and shyness when asking people on the street if I could take a picture of them. I am a people photographer and I tried to include pictures of people in the architectural photos as much as possible, which was what the UNESCO committee really liked. A couple of years ago I started posting pictures on Instagram. I enjoy it but find it involves much more effort than I expected, and leaves little time for my other photographic activities. I am grateful to Sean Tucker who through his YouTube channel, helped me put Instagram into perspective. LOCATION Casablanca MOROCCO CAMERA/S Leica @MELITAVANGELATOS FEATURES // Casablanca Now Telling Stories

AWAKENING INSTINCTS Marilena Filaiti is living proof of the importance that photography can make in your life. An enlightening experience that gave her more understanding of herself and the world she exists in. AWAKENING INSTINCTS November 11, 2022 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Marilena Filaiti INTERVIEW Karen Ghostlaw Pomarico Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE Marilena Filaiti is living proof of the importance that photography can make in your life. It was an enlightening experience for Marilena, giving her more understanding of herself and the world she exists in. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Marilena's father worked for the United Nations and was appointed to work in Africa where he lived with his wife for eleven years and where Marilena was born. They returned to Greece when Marilena was four years old, and her mother was pregnant with her brother, who was born in Athens. Both of their parents had a cosmopolitan upbringing. Marilena’s father, a descendant from the Egyptian Greeks and her mother from Istanbul, with a lineage of Greek descent, felt it important to pass their culture and heritage to their children. Marilena fell in love with the man she then married at a very young age and they soon started their family, a value important to Marilena, a legacy from her Mother. Caring and parenting three children created a demanding life that challenged Marilena, taking on many different jobs along the way to help make a good home for her family. Marilena ultimately took a job that gave her exposure and a chance to learn about marketing utilizing specialized multimedia tools that related to photography. These tools and their applications gave Marilena the inspiration to take up and explore the “Art of Photography”. Fascinated by Photography, she bought her first camera and started experimenting with her new tool, it wasn't long before she entered her first photography contest and was hooked. She decided to penetrate the world of photography and learn as much as she could. Her first teacher, Tolis Chatzignatiou, inspired her first steps and for three years he supported Marilena's development as a photographer. Tolis Chatzignatiou taught Marilena the principles of photography and how to clearly choose for herself what she wishes to include in her frame. She made many educational trips with the photographic group “Routes”, even getting close to her father's birthplace, an experience powerful for Marilena. Marilena was thirsty to learn more and more about photography, to go deeper and deeper, to be able to create meaningful photographs of her own. Marilena wanted to expand her knowledge and understanding of photography and immersed herself in photography workshops led by Lukas Vasilikos in October 2021. He has been an excellent teacher and mentor to Marilena, guiding her in her search within herself to find what she wants to express, while exposing her to new ideologies, working with his direction to create powerful sensational images that have much meaning. This motivating and influential experience gave birth to Marilena's first solo project, AWAKENING INSTINCTS, through which Marilena shares her insightful presentation of her project and her photography. We wish her much inspiration in her quest to create powerful intimate images that speak from the heart. “For the first time I saw my work complete. I continue today to grow personally and as a photographer by studying with Lukas. He keeps pushing me to work on new projects that allow me to express myself. Less need for words, more opportunities for visual inspiration.” IN CONVERSATION WITH MARILENA FILAITI THE PICTORIAL LIST: Marilena, tell us about Athens and what life in Greece has brought to your work AWAKENING INSTINCTS. We see how important your family members are to your work, tell us what inspiration they bring to this collection MARILENA FILIATI: Greece is a unique country worth visiting. Athens is a city with its beauties and its difficulties. Like all over the world, the pandemic touched us here, where photography became an excellent outlet for me. The pandemic directly connected the project with my inner world. Many photographs were taken in different parts of Greece during this period. There is nothing more important to me than my family and my home. My friends are also family. My teacher Lukas Vasilikos urged me to dig deeper and express photographically how important my family members are to me. TPL: Tell us about this project, Marilena; how it came about, what you were looking for, what you finally discovered. What surprised you? MF: When the workshop started, I had no idea what the outcome would be. Step by step we started to build this project gradually through the course of the study cycle. When I saw my photos on the wall I was impressed. I didn't know this side of myself. The most important reason besides my love for photography is that I don't have to talk too much with my images. That's how I've wanted to express myself for the last few years. I was surprised by the result because I finally managed to have a meaningful conversation through this project. TPL: You told us how important your teacher here was to you for this project, how you worked side by side. What were his influences on you, what were the gifts he gave you. What was his role as you created this project? MF: Master Lukas Vasilikos is an experienced and inspiring photographer himself, quite strict with himself but with unlimited patience and acceptance for his students. This characteristic of his allowed me to be inspired by him and many world photographers. Lukas also dared me to express myself freely and personally during our classes. He led me through the photographic process accepting and correcting any technical difficulties I had, while supporting me to move forward to my personal artistic identity through paths I admit, I didn't know I could take. TPL: There is depth in your shadows, creating intimate spaces for your subjects. Tell us about these shadows, darkness and what they represent in your photographs. MF: Within those shadows are important gifts of awareness. I like to create new worlds; escaping from reality. I like after instinctively creating them, to revisit my works as a viewer and have them transform into new stories. I listen to my silence and find the peace of mind I seek. TPL: Your colors are deep and saturated, adding to the depth of space and creating thought provoking connections to your subject matter. Tell us about the role color plays in these images. MF: I originally worked mostly in black and white and through my work with Lukas, I discovered color. I saw color as a tool for individual expression. It transformed the world around me into something else, something colorful, something much more dreamy, lyrical, focusing inward, allowing me to express my deeper self. Saturation is a medium that transports me to these other worlds. The bright color seems fake to me and does not represent my own reality. TPL: When you began this journey of self discovery, where did you start? Why? MF: I started this journey of self exploration with themes familiar to me, close to me, subjects accessible to me, so that I could venture deeper to see them in another dimension. an imaginary transformation of them. Thus my one son was transformed into a creature of my imagination, he effortlessly played this role since he trustingly allowed me to create another reality by "rebirthing" him through my photograph. My daughter, seen through another gaze that perhaps she herself did not initially accept, as the unconventional realistic image that she was, but she quickly realized how redemptive the freedom of a different gaze is. My little son, who grew up through our collaboration, agrees that the result has rewarded us both. My friends showed me the same trust by posing and allowing me to play freely with the lens. I like to create new worlds; escaping from reality. I listen to my silence and find the peace of mind I seek. TPL: What new discoveries have you made while doing this project? Has this project been completed? MF: Expression itself is a great discovery for me who doesn't like words much and is more of a sensory person. That is to speak through a medium that I share with so many people, even globally, and to “say it all” through the common language of the Image. My work has now become synonymous with my existence and as I evolve, it will evolve too. Each new experience I experience motivates me to 'lock in' the moment. Our lives are made up of moments. TPL: Can you recall that defining moment when you understood how to use photography to create what you wanted to say or see with your eyes, heart and soul? When you photograph, how much is instinct and spontaneity programmed? Do you pose your subjects? MF: When I realized that photography was a love for me and that I could express through it whatever I was hiding inside, I decided to leave my job to follow it in whatever path it took me. Because of my love for photography, I decided to only work in the field professionally. There is absolutely no programming in the way I photograph, I work on impulse and instinct, I ‘shoot’ non-stop even if I don't have a camera at that moment. Of course this requires one to have acquired a solid technical base and to have incorporated it. I would say my impulsiveness has gotten me into trouble at times. However, when I work as a professional, I try to listen to the needs of the subject matter but always through the freedom of my personal view. TPL: What are the lasting impressions you want to leave on the viewer, what is their 'Take Away'? What was yours? MF: I have no intention of leaving a lasting impression on the viewer. Everyone is free to make whatever impression they wish based on their reading. I wish to converse and evoke emotions. My takeaway is to have a photograph I see speak to me. TPL: Does the equipment you use help you achieve your vision in your photography? What camera do you use? Do you have a preferred lens/focal distance? MF: So far it has been adequate. Currently I have developed a need to try even more sophisticated gear. I am on a quest. Initially I was shooting with my mobile phone. Then I was accompanied on my journey by a Nikon D3400, a Panasonic Lumix DC Vario with which I also shoot with in water, a Canon EOS R, and I have a collection of analogs, mostly old pieces. I've been trying different lenses and haven't settled on a recommended one yet. TPL: What are some of your goals as an artist or photographer? Where do you hope to see yourself in five years? MF: This journey is a journey of freedom for me. It's a journey that matters, the destination of which I myself will know in five years. MF: “When I don't go out to photograph, I like to... I like to travel, drive, walk with my friends, read and often enjoy my ‘solitude’.” 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.

AN OBSERVED REALISM Inspired by her local relaxed beach lifestyle in Australia, Melanie Meggs' photographs combine an observed realism with a touch of quirkiness. AN OBSERVED REALISM March 5, 2020 INTERVIEW PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Meggs INTERVIEW Karin Svadlenak Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy link SHARE As people, we are often defined by our experiences – some good, some bad – that shape who we are and how we interact with the world around us. For one Australian visual artist, her near-death experience was the light that shone a new path in her life, leading her to explore photography as a creative outlet and a way to escape from reality. Melanie Meggs is an artist and visionary photographer, whose work speaks to the depths of the human experience. With a background in Fine Arts and years of field experience, Melanie has a unique talent for creating scenarios through strangers on the streets, exploring the intersections of reality and fiction. Her photography is often satirical humorous and serves as a psychological representation of her escape from the everyday. The creative mind behind The Pictorial List, Melanie's artistry runs deep and her thought-provoking works give viewers a rare insight into her world. Through her lens, she invites us to join her on a journey of exploration, allowing us to take a glimpse of the reality she has created for herself. Her works are captivating, mysterious and simply beautiful. Melanie's story is inspiring and her works serve as a reminder that art can be used to explore and express the depths of our inner lives. Join us as we go behind the lens with Melanie Meggs to discover how photography changed her life. You'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut. - Dr. Seuss “From a young age, I have been completely mesmerized by people and their complex interactions in different scenarios. I intently observe and analyse their behavior and social relationships, as I find it incredibly fascinating.” IN CONVERSATION WITH MELANIE MEGGS THE PICTORIAL LIST: Melanie, when did you start getting interested in photography? MELANIE MEGGS: As far back as I can remember, I have always had a passion for photography. It all started when I was a young child and I would snap pictures of everything around me with my trusty camera. When I began studying art, I was overjoyed to receive my first SLR camera - a secondhand Nikon FE. I still have that camera to this day and it holds a special place in my heart. While I was initially more interested in the theoretical side of photography, I loved the experience of working in the darkroom and seeing my images come to life before my eyes. Although it's been many years since then, those memories remain vivid and exciting. A few years ago, my life was almost taken away from me by Sepsis (Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome), but I used that experience to change my perspective on life. I was very lucky to have survived. I began to appreciate life in a new light, taking a camera out with me on my daily rehab walks to keep me company. Through my viewfinder, I was able to escape the reality of my illness and everyday life. Even today, photography remains a place of solace for me. TPL: Where do you find your inspiration? MM: I derive my inspiration from my passion for painting. Though I can no longer paint with the same skill as before, I have discovered a way to incorporate my love for painting into my photography. I now paint with my eyes, capturing beauty through the lens of my camera. TPL: Do you have any favourite artists or photographers you would like to share with us, and the reason for their significance? MM: I have forever been inspired by artists such as Jeffrey Smart, Edward Hopper and David Hockney. The way they created these precisionist depicted scenes of urban landscapes that were full of playful allusions appealed to me very early on in my life. I recently have found inspiration in the conceptual photographic works of Ben Thomas and Maria Svarbova. TPL: Has your style of photographing changed since you first started? MM: Certainly, my approach to photography has evolved over time, and I anticipate that it will continue to evolve as I gain new insights and knowledge. TPL: Where is your favourite place to photograph? MM: I really enjoy taking photos at the beach these days. People there seem more carefree and happy, which makes for great photos. I recently visited Japan, and it was a photographer's dream come true. There were endless opportunities for amazing shots, and the people there were wonderful. I'm already planning to go back again in the future. I also love experimenting with different techniques in art galleries and museums. It's a fun way to challenge myself and create something unique. I now paint with my eyes, capturing beauty through the lens of my camera. TPL: Do you think equipment is important in achieving your vision in your photography? What is your current camera and why did you choose it? Is there anything on your wishlist? MM: I would love to have a camera with weather-sealed medium format or full frame capabilities to successfully achieve my photography objectives. This feature is crucial to my work, as I often capture images in sandy or wet surroundings, and it is essential to the quality of my work. Additionally, I aspire to produce enormous prints in the future, and having a camera with more megapixels will help me achieve this goal. I currently use the Olympus OMD EM II and mostly use my prime lenses 17mm (35mm equiv) and 85mm (170mm equiv). I have a deep affection for my Olympus camera. Its 5-point stabilization, lightweight design, and ability to produce stunning colors makes me hesitant to invest in a new camera at the moment. On my wishlist, emphasis on WISH!...a Leica or a Hasselblad...I shall just keep dreaming at the moment though. TPL: Have you ever been involved in the artistic world before photography? MM: I have a diverse background in the arts, having studied Fine Arts with a focus on art history, painting, and printmaking. Additionally, I studied music and can play the tenor horn, trumpet, and tuba. From 2012, I co-owned a homewares, florist store, and gallery with my close friend, where we showcased the work of talented Australian artisans. Our store also featured our own handmade timber furniture and homeware designs. Sadly in 2018, we had to close the store due to my illness. TPL: Are there any special projects you are currently working on that you would like to let everyone know about? MM: The Pictorial List!...A worldwide online community photography platform that delves into the intricacies and splendor of all types of photography. We have numerous exciting concepts in the works and can't wait to share them with you! TPL: “When I am not out photographing, I (like to)… MM: Something creative! Enjoying life on sunny days.” PORTFOLIO 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.