Vladimir Borowicz

Painting with shadow

Vladimir was born in France, in 1978, in a revolutionary militant family, lovers of the Surrealism, Cinema, Jazz, Blues and Folk music. At the age of three, his parents put him in the Music Conservatory. At six, he joined a Jazz Academy where he stayed until he was 18.

In Secondary School, his teachers, lovers of art and cinema, created art and cinema classes where he discovered the first movie that would change his life perspective: Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil”. This movie – sensual, oppressive, dark, poisonous and brilliant – was his baptism. And so, his desire for cinema, images and for telling stories was born. A few years later, while studying for a Bachelor in Science with a major in Cinema, he discovered his second film, his “confirmation”: John Cassavetes’s “Shadows”.

He then entered the French public cinema university. He took his degree with a major on direction and photography. He dedicated his final university work to the representation of the unconscious, the fantasies and the sexuality, comparing Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” and Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour”.

A couple of years ago, he bought his first camera and started taking pictures… “just for the fun of it.” In his own words Vladimir explains his work: “I consider myself as a portrait photographer as I work always around the personality, the inner world, the own fantasies of my models...” In what concerns the ideas for his photo shoots, he says they come from “a mix between improvisation, my feelings of the moment, my sensations toward the models... and a personal culture, mythology made of artistic, cinematographic, musical references, etc.”

To describe his personality, Vladimir quotes one of his favourite bands: “I’ll keep diggin’ till I feel something” (Tool, Stinkfist).