Naturally Surrealistic

from November/December 2021

small talk

Lara Zankoul is a visual artist based in Beirut whose work captures every human behavior and the issues that occur within society through photographic media and video and 3D mediums. Her aim is to allow her audiences to come up with their own interpretation and understanding of the works and the stories behind them. “My work is heavily based on experimentation and world building to create moments and craft them rather than just document them. My art [is] conceptual, dreamy, surreal and minimal,” she says.

Lara became interested in art from a very young age. She remembers how much she enjoyed attending art exhibitions and looking at photos from fashion magazines and wishing she could capture photos like the ones she was seeing. But she always assumed she wasn’t very cre-

ative, basing that assumption on the fact that she excelled in mathematical subjects at school. “I decided to study economics at university, not because I loved it, but because it seemed like a safe choice back then. When I first started my full-time job as an economics researcher, I decided to buy a camera and teach myself photography,” Lara says.

Lara’s surrealist style of art came very naturally. She uses photography to escape reality rather than document it. “It started by defying gravity, photographing misplaced objects, changing the function of objects, or playing with proportions. All these techniques led to this surreal aspect. Using the camera –which was primarily created to capture reality – to document surrealism was the challenge that kept me passionate.”

ArtDiction | 22 | November/December 2021

Lara Zankoul

Her concepts come from her state of mind, her triggers, and her daily life experiences. She is also inspired by subjects related to photography and technique, including good lighting, a subject, nice colors and textures, even, architecture, an emotion, or movie. “It is very psychological and quite personal even if it seems universal and timeless at the same time,” she says. “Creating conceptual photos could be like writing philosophy but with a visual language; it’s about digging deeper than the surface of things, questioning, introspecting.” After she comes up with a concept or an intention, Lara moves to the execution by breaking down the photoshoot into the following categories: location, model, art direction, wardrobe, and lighting. “During the shoot, I follow the initial idea but a lot of times, I leave room for improvisation. I love to feel very

present and go with the flow during the process, and sometimes unexpected things happen. They are the most beautiful.”

Lara has recently tapped into the world of NFTS and has been inspired to create more virtual and surreal pieces using different mediums. “I am working on many ideas in parallel, some will be a learning experience, others will succeed; so stay tuned!”

Go to linktr.ee/larazankoul to see more of Lara’s art.

ArtDiction | 24 | November/December 2021

Lara Zankoul