Yulia’s project, TIME, began evolving in 2020 as she started combining her passions for film photography and clothing design.
In 2023, we connected at a photography exhibition where she generously invited me to collaborate on TIME. She envisioned incorporating elements of my experimental photography and through that weave in my own interpretations of time.
Yulia draws inspiration from gothic visuals, nature and historical references. She crafts naturally sourced garments and wearable art pieces that she adorns with cyanotype prints from her film photography. Each piece serves as a visual abstraction of TIME.
Our first shoot in the spring of 2024: Yulia modelled her own TIME pieces.
During the shoot two distinct characters emerged. Yulia named them 'Joy' and Warrior':
Since Yulia Yoldina invited me on board as a collaborative partner on her Project: TIME, I too have spent time with time—exploring it through ideas and meditations. Rather than seeing it as my usual rigid adversary, measured in minutes, hours, and seconds, I’ve let it exist as a playful background hum. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an urge to slow everything down and live in a pace that corresponds to my own inner clock—one where time is shaped more like a spiral, often standing still, expanding in some moments and contracting in others.
On our photoshoot during the spring of 2023, for me, Yulia became a time-defying energy. Wearing her art pieces, she aligns with nature and seems to reach back through the past and into the present moments. All her wearable art pieces have printed elements that allude to light: The cyanotype print on a scarf is light sparkling on water, on the collar of her jabot is sunlight coming though trees, a hand band shows a fireplace and on her cyanotype medallion is a burning candle - all of which is printed by light itself. Playing with light is at the heart of my own work: when I record light trails of movement on to my camera sensor, it freezes movement across a moment in time - and shows that our nature is nature, defined by transience, made of light and sustained by light.
The black-and-white images evoke a timeless gaze, contrasting sharply with their vibrant counterparts in bright spring greens and yellows, the intention is to catapult the viewer into the immediacy of the fleeting present and the moments of spring.
