THE MAGIC OF A CREATIVE LIFE

My first Kodak camera at the age of ten awakened my interest. Since then, at age eighteen, I learned portrait photography at Photo Montmartre in Paris, where I worked for them for a few seasons as a beach photographer on the Côte d’Azur, shooting 30 to 50 films a day. Since then, my dream was to become an art photographer, which did not happen immediately but thirty years later.

In the meantime, I was active as a press photographer at Ullstein Bild in Hamburg. I was familiar with Photoshop since version 1.1. I created two photobooks, Zarathustra and The Fragrance of Japan, supported by my recording company, Membran International. But still, in my eyes, I was not yet an art photographer. I was just a good photojournalist, no more, no less.

Around 2004–2006, the big worldwide crash in the music industry began due to CD copying, iTunes, streaming, and other factors. There was not enough revenue to make a living. So I had to invent a Plan B.

As I was already mastering Photoshop because of my cover art and books, and also had an enormous pool of photos, I began out of despair and necessity to randomly overlay two or three photos on top of each other. Then—boom! It happened. My photo art was born. I went crazy with it. Then came monumental photo compositing with 30 to 50 photo collages. The resonance was very rewarding, both creatively and financially, already at my first exhibition.

At some point, I grew tired of the Photoshop wizard I had become. I wanted something easier with more live character. The idea came: can I make art directly in the camera? That is when multiple exposure struck my mind. I made some tests and was absolutely amazed by the creative potential of this actually very old technique. The absolutely fabulous part is that you do not see what you are doing, but you can still somehow predict how the outcome will be, or not. And that was absolutely in my mentality of contradictions: yin and yang. You want something predictable, but it never turns out that way. The unpredictable randomness takes over at some point—like in real life, nothing goes exactly as we want.

That is how I finally became an art photographer. It took long time, but it happened.

What I learned: Keep dreaming your dreams silently. Be patient. Even forget them. But if your dream is sincere, It will pop up suddenly out of nowhere, at the right time and the right place. That is the magic of a creative life. 

Sina Vodjani

My very first Kodak camera at the age of 10