Photographer Profile: Bára Prášilová

Though award-winning photographer Bára Prášilová has worked with top fashion houses and brands such as Louis Vuitton, she doesn’t really see herself as a photographer, more as a creator of images that help her construct her own world. And it’s a curious, whimsical world, influenced by a childhood spent in peculiar places looking at peculiar things – from psychiatric patients in caged beds to a pickled embryo in a Nutella jar. Donatella Montrone investigates

A classic Communist madhouse. That’s how photographer Bára Prášilová describes the psychiatric ward where her mother worked. Growing up in the Czech Republic, Prášilová says she created an inner world for herself – lost in her own imagination, within the confines of a typical Soviet-style block of flats backing onto woodland, on the outskirts of Prague. “Everyone is influenced by their surroundings, and my brother and I were also influenced by our mother. We used to visit her at the hospital,” says Prášilová.

“There was a bad smell and strange-looking people making strange-looking movements in their caged beds. In another hospital, my mother worked in a gynaecology ward. She brought home a human embryo once. We kept it in the fridge, pickled in formaldehyde in a Nutella jar.” Prášilová feels this rather unusual upbringing has resulted in her being drawn towards ‘special’ people, “people who don’t have many friends,” she says, with irony.

Prášilová was shy and self-conscious as a child, so it made sense for her to choose a career in which she could hide behind a lens. “I went to the park one day when I was young to take pictures with my point-and-shoot. I remember how important a moment this was for me. I never wanted to seem weird. But that day I realised that, because I had a camera in my hand, I could go someplace alone and stare at things – such as a blank wall – and not feel insane. It turned me into an artist, so it didn’t matter what people thought of me.”

Prášilová studied photography at The Institute of Creative Photography at Silesian University in Opava, “partly to avoid ending up working in an office”, she says. But while she’s made a name for herself in the profession, photography is just a tool that helps her build her “own reality”. She says: “I don’t take photographs; I create pictures.”

The pursuit of perfection

She rarely improvises on shoots – each one is planned with near military precision: carefully storyboarded or sketched beforehand, the props constructed with meticulous craftsmanship. Her shoots are often prepared for several hours, even days. “The models’ clothes, hair and make-up are arranged within one millimetre accuracy,” and she discusses even the smallest detail with the stylist. “What I value most is perfect lighting and technical perfection. My camera and Photoshop are just the tools that help me achieve that.”

Though she’s more interested in technical craftsmanship than conveying emotions, her series, Evolve, which won her the Hasselblad Masters 2014 in the fashion and beauty category, is fraught with emotion, albeit in the controlled manner in which Prášilová works. Evolve examines the delicate, “fragile threads” that bind human beings to one another. “Through my photographs, I’ve been trying to understand human connections and relationships: the hair symbolises the invisible strings we use to strap somebody to us, or perhaps the opposite, to let someone loose,” she writes on her website. Evolve is ultimately a series about love – an emotion that human beings can’t do without – and the fear attached to losing it, often causing us to cling to it, ever more tightly.

When Prášilová is commissioned to shoot fashion editorials for designers, she’s usually afforded the freedom to use her own interpretation of the brief. She scouts her own locations, chooses her own models and even makes her own props. “Magazines always ask me to create my own concept, and they rarely intervene. Of course, there are exceptions. Once I was asked to erase a noose from a model’s neck for a Louis Vuitton advertorial.” From sketching to post production, she often works tirelessly for days on end. “A shoot might take several days. If I’m combining multiple shots for a montage, and the shots are taken with an exterior background, then it’s even more important to get the perspective, distance, height and angle of the object perfect. Post production can take 14 days, working day and night.”

She says her personal projects are a reflection of who she is, “or how I wish to be” and also of how she might be feeling at the time. “I was shooting a project where the models look as if they are going to fall off the edge of a building. I can see now that these photographs subconsciously show my state of mind at the time. There was fog all around – it represented an inability to see a whole picture.”

Prášilová feels some responsibility for the messages her photographs convey; “It really matters how you communicate – what tones you use and how others understand you. Colours are used as a way of speaking, which is why I use soft and gentle palettes in Evolve – to balance what could be seen as a weird or creepy scene.”

The photographer plans to remain in Prague for the time being. “I rule my universe from here,” she says. “I’m currently setting up a company called Papernaut with my friend and designer, creating products that will feature in my photos. But I’m open to other fantastic projects. I’m ready for anything.”

baraprasilova.com