Anya Chibis
Written and designed by Sarah Fry. All images courtesy of Anya Chibis. Copyright of photographs to Anya Chibis.
Timeline 1978
Born in Kiev, Ukraine
1982-1995
Studied Painting
1995
Immigrated to Canada
1997-2000
Studied Painting, Photography, and Filmmaking at the Ontario College of Art and Design/ also worked as a PA and set decorator
2000-2002
Moved to Moscow, Russia to study film directing at a postgraduate program
200-2005
First assistant director in advertising and film for a production company/ Photo editor of Afisha Magazine
2005-2010
Editorial photographer for Russian Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, Park Avenue, Playboy, Maxim, InStyle, Marie Claire, Glamour, Esquire, V Magazine, Citizen K, Rolling Stone, Swallow Advertising photographer for Coca-Cola, Citi Bank Group, Proctor & Gamble, Philip Morris, Ritz Hotels, Master Card, Renaissance Insurance Group, Kimberly-Clark, BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi, United Campaign, Publicis, Y&R, Leo Burnett, Instinct, McCann-Erickson, Yarche, DDB, Lowe Adventa
2010-2011
Moved to Toronto, Canada to restructure her portfolio and expand her career to North America. She also is creating a home for herself in Toronto with her four-month-old son.
Anya Chibis, a fashion, portrait and lifestyle photographer has worked for heavy hitting clients including Russian Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ and Rolling Stone. Her career took off in Moscow Russia when she moved there from Canada for a postgraduate program in 2000. Going to study film directing she hadn’t expected that the way she was going to make a living was in photography. Anya says that work wise, Moscow is “very good right now compared to everywhere else in the world.” It is a place where you can be a professional photographer, get paid well and have your expenses covered. In Russia nearly every big brand magazine has an office and those offices are selling more advertising than anywhere else in the world. She notes that while there are other ways to make a living with a camera, “the real money is mostly in advertising.” In Russia, at the particular time she was working there, the competition for advertising photographers was low. There were many magazines and few photographers.
There were many magazines and few photographers. This gave her the ability to become a popular photographer in the advertising and editorial sector very quickly. Anya grew up in Kiev, Ukraine. When she was sixteen in 1995 her parents moved to Canada. From 1997 to 2000 she attended the Ontario College of Art and Design for painting, photography and film making. Anya’s background in painting gave her an advantage with her photography. “It’s a huge advantage that I was a painter first and I did that for many years,” she said. “Basically, if you are a painter that makes you an artist. If
you are a photographer that doesn’t necessarily make you an artist because there are too many bad photographers around who are not artists, they are more like crafts people.” Her use of color and light in her painting has directly influenced
those aspects of her photography. In addition, her background in film has also influenced her photography. “A lot of people say that my photography is like movie stills.Compositionally and narrativly there is something about it that it’s like a still frame from a film. All of these components influence my photography; painting and film. That in a way makes up my style I’d like to think.” Her interest in photography began when she was sixteen. In Toronto she went to a high school with a focus in art. “There was a photography class to take which was very new to me. There was no such class back in
USSR”, she said. Her first photographs were taken with her fathers twenty year old Zenit camera. At this point, and even in college, although she had an interest in photography she didn’t expect to make a living from it. In college, “they didn’t teach people how to make money doing photography. I don’t think anybody gives you a clear idea of what it’s like in the industry.” She notes that the business side of journalism, being able to market oneself, is equally as important as being able to take good photographs. “There are too many people doing the same thing. You have to treat it very seriously. It’s like any other business. It’s maybe 20% of shooting and 80% of meetings, phone calls emails, research and quoting. It’s not big fun but it’s part of the job if you want to make money with it.” When she moved to Russia for her post graduate program in film directing she began working as the first assistant director and line producer for an advertising group. Then she moved on to work as a photo editor and was producing shoots and coming up with ideas for shoots for Afisha (translates to Billboard) magazine. It was a very creative job which gave her the ability to control the outcome of the projects. Her history in photography and film gave her the visual literacy to produce good shoots. The photo director eventually gave her a chance to shoot. “The result was very fresh,” she said. She had photographed one fashion shoot and another portrait session of actors. “When these two stories came out immediately other magazines started calling me because they saw that it was very different and fairly
professional so I started shooting for Vogue and GQ virtually without promoting myself. That is a very unlikely situation to anywhere else in the world. This couldn’t happen to me anywhere else but Russia at that very particular time because the market was not saturated with photographers but there were a lot of magazines so competition was very low. My career immediately took off and I had lots of work.” Success in the photo industry comes only if you keep shooting until you have a solid portfolio, Anya said. “The
key is to start working seriously and making money in the photo industry is to create a very good portfolio as a start. That takes years. You can’t just say, ‘I have X amount of money and
I’m going to take a year off and just create all of this work for my portfolio myself.’ It’s just not going to work even if you have a million dollars to do it. You need to be shooting for magazines and doing professional assignments. Personal work will help you a lot and it’s very important but it’s still unlikely that it’s going to alone take you to the professional level. When you shoot an assignment you are not shooting what you’d like and you need to treat the job differently.” Her favorite shoot so far was for Afisha magazine. It was for the Moscow and St. Petersburg offices. It was a series of artists’ portraits in their studios in these two cities. In each city she photographed ten artists. It took her around two weeks in Moscow and a week in St. Petersburg to
photograph the people. Portraits in natural light are her favorite things to shoot. “A good portrait is sort of this unspoken connection that you create with the other person you are shooting even if you’ve never met them before. The interesting part is that in this very short period of time you find their buttons and find a way for them to feel comfortable with you and create sort of a very special relationship. Essentially you want to pull through the psychological component of their personality into your work.
their personality in the image.”
You want to reflect
This set of images that she took of the artists in their studios is the work that people respond to the most. “I love environmental portraits,” she said. She learned to appreciate the objects that surround us in our everyday lives when she was living in Canada and working as a set director and a buyer for advertising and film. “Your environment and your stuff around you can tell more about a person than their face and their appearance. I love artists’ studios and their houses because it’s an extension of their personality,” she told me. The images that she took for this project were done on film. Luckily the magazine paid for all of her expenses. “My bills for processing and printing were huge.” Usually, she told me, it takes a long time to photograph a person at a moment when they forget you are there. “That’s the problem with film. On one person it could take twenty to thirty rolls to get to that point… The person who will give you the chance to shoot that picture can’t be in a rush.”
When asked if it is possible to balance work and family life she told me that if you are a busy working photographer you can’t really do that. “When you travel it’s a very lonely place to be. After a long period of working as a photographer anyone’s got to be tired, lonely and wanting to have a more balanced life. Having a child was kind of my way of getting out of this pattern. I was traveling two, three times a month. It was becoming very emotionally difficult and physically difficult. It’s fun, it’s great, but after a while it becomes very difficult, especially for a woman. I’m not sure it’s very true or not but I always felt that male photographers have an advantage just because it’s very physically draining. You always carry a lot of equipment and travel with a lot of stuff. To
be successful in anything you need to sacrifice a lot of things. To make money and have
interesting projects you have to say no to a lot of things.” Anya told me that originally she wanted to be a photojournalist but found that it wasn’t for her. Most of her friends are photojournalists and she knows that hardly anyone in that field is paid or sent on serious assignments. “Its super difficult for a woman, I think, psychologically to be able to travel and have these sort of brief relationships and brief friendships and brief everything. After a while you get very tired of it and you want more stability and you want your base. Even males, everyone in the photojournalist world knows you need a base even if you don’t spend too much of your time there you need home. I never really had that.”
Now Anya is trying to make her home base in Toronto. Four months ago she gave birth to her son. She is currently reworking her portfolio to meet the needs of the industry in North America. She is also meeting with photo representatives and advertising agencies in Toronto. “I’m very lucky because I had the time and the chance to build my portfolio in Russia. I feel quite optimistic despite the economy and the fact that there is little work,” she said.
A
rtists in their studios