Iryna Ho

Stanislav in my frame, not nude part

Added 2025-09-07 09:00:06 +0000 UTC

Stanislav and I met for the first time in August 2023, when he photographed me nude.

Before and after that, I spent a long time observing his work. I like how he sees women in the frame and photographs them on film.

He is currently serving in the army; one day I wrote to him, “If you're in Kyiv, let's go for coffee, and I'd like to take some portraits of you.”

One day he wrote that he would be in the capital.

We met for ramen. How do you imagine a conversation between civilians and military personnel? I want to talk and support him, but we have almost nothing in common; we live in two different worlds.

So I booked a studio nearby and said that we wouldn't do anything specific. (As you can see in the photo, the studio still had a broken window, and opposite it were apartments destroyed by russian shaheds.)

He had a film camera with him, and before I finished his portrait series and he started photographing me, I allowed myself to be a little mischievous and said, “Let's take a picture together” — there was this shot with my leg on his chest.

Then I sat naked on his lap in front of the mirror. He started laughing and got a little embarrassed, but he joined in the game and the process. I was pleased to see that he came alive energetically and made suggestions. The series looks intimate and perhaps candid, but nothing more happened behind the scenes than what is shown in the photos. It's such an interesting moment that I was his model, and he was my photographer, so these shots weren't anything strange.

We may not have had a dialogue with words, but we had a good time and I saw his smile, which was a thrill!