Let’s get this straight: Tania Shcheglova and Roman Noven (the duo from Ukraine, also known as Synchrodogs.com) are among our favourite emerging photographers. If you consider them just fashion photographers, you are completely off the mark. Their pictures are possessed by a raw and authentic inspiration and they’d be able to crush a big slice of the current fashion photography – for the originality of the staging, their choice of subjects and the absolutely first class experimental visual tension. We talked to Tania and here’s what we spoke about. (Interview by Maurizio Di Iorio)
You have shot some of the most beautiful and iconic photographs on Flickr, this last year. They’re possessed by an authentic and visceral inspiration, a rare creative gift in a world of predictable and way too balanced photographers. You managed to achieve these results in little more than two years. When you started to work together, did you already have a precise idea of what you wanted to do?
Hm, we didn’t start it like a photography duo, we just fell in love, and hanging out together made “us” I guess. It used to be more simple just a year ago, taking pictures on the trees, and now the situation changed dramatically as we realised the importance of styling and found our own more or less recognizable style. And the environment we live in makes us create everything for the shooting ourselves, as no designers can help you in small Ukrainian cities. And God bless Roman’s mind which is so alike mine to consider the same things to be cool, so we never fight about what is in our style and what is not, we just make out an idea and shoot.
Lo-fi language and imperfection in the framing, on one side; on the other, control of the image in its totality, with an experimental visual tension which is both mature and first class. In your pictures, an apparent expressive ingenuousness shares the stage with a sophisticated complexity of references – and in each one of them the innovative daring is remarkable. What are your inspirations?
We usually sort ideas out of thoughts that come into our mind during the day and moreover – out of those that come at night time when lying in bed and having too much energy to sleep. We try to avoid too much Internet interrupting our own ideas and not to copy the pictures that already exist, so we remember no names to call an inspiration and no blogs are visited by us more than once or twice per life unless we have reasons for that. The point is that we are always together going everywhere and everyday and both of us keep eyes open.
Tight golden catsuits, floral details, bizarre clothing cuts. Your models express a look that seems to mix Western and Ukrainian/Byzantine tradition (with a few references to folklore and local naive art). Is it hard to be equally creative and eccentric with male models?
We never divide the shootings into male/female. We always look for the clothes in line with the location search and in the end the girl appears to be more acceptable in the experimental fashion world, as Roman will for sure look awkward lying on the frozen lake all dressed in gold. The thing is that there are locations that will never suit the man or, to be closer to the point, that will never suit my man, and public has to deal with it.
After your experience with Urban Outfitters, are you planning to shift your focus more on fashion photography?
Well, if this fact is not obvious – yes, we do plan, but let it remain not a classical fashion photography that can not survive if no studio backgrounds are used. We do have the knowledge, how to use all the new popular digital cams and studio lightning, but we let this knowledge remain unused, just stored. We try to make this modern fashion area go underground, become a little bit more trashy than people are used to seeing. At the same time we make projects that have nothing to do with fashion, but are the same about us.
To destroy the pedestal on which you have put the Woman and to bring her back to reality: will it ever happen in your photographs?
If Vanga was right with her predictions and we all die in 2012, not enough time we have to go that low haha. But we have always had excessive energy to put into photography so let the situation remain the same. We prefer to think we will go further.
What about the photographers that affected you the most?
The word “affected” sounds too loud, there are many people whom we respect for their talent, but anyway no names to be named that totally changed our direction. We are just together sharing our observations and forming ideas out of what we see and feel.
Are there any subjects that you absolutely avoid to photograph?
I guess not, as we have no shame and are stupid enough to shoot anything that looks weird or naked. But there is always something that is not in line with our tastes and vision for what we would definitely use no film shots.
Describe me your ideal day.
Waking up at 12, eating sushi 3 times a day and accidentally coming across crazy locations near which somebody has forgotten his eccentric clothes and accessories to shoot.
Which magazine would you like to work for?
(The answer for this question is all the same for everybody working in “strange fashion” area, isn’t it?) Please let it be LOVE, some Dazed or Vice stuff, Purple fashion etc.
Tania Shcheglova and Roman Noven
