Beautifully Ugly: Shooting Squares with Gioia Zloczower
1 14 Share TweetWhen we heard that San Francisco-based fashion photographer Gioia Zloczower's quirky style had earned her Vogue’s Best Still Life Photographer award, our ears naturally pricked up. Curious to know more about her supernatural, kitsch-cool style, we catapulted a Lomo’Instant Square her way. And, as expected, she doled out some sensationally sassy goods.
Meat the Family
Creatively energised by her eccentrically glam Oma and Opa, Gioia's Lomo’Instant Square series is a revitalising reminder that no subject should ever truly be off limits, reassuring us that pretty can be putrid, frailty can be intimidating, and grotesque can be, well, gorgeous.
Capturing Contradiction
With an ingenious eye for pastel combinations and a gravitation towards subjects that stupefy with their (brilliant) unapologetic frankness,
Gioia's instant shots are refreshingly daring.
“I went on various photo shoots,” she explains, “a day trip to Germany, to the supermarket, and documented my everday moves with it. At times the Lomo'Instant Square even replaced the Contax camera I usually have in my pocket.’’
An unwitting advocate of our first Golden Rule (take your camera everywhere you go!), Gioia told us just how “stunning it was to watch a photograph come to life and develop its colors right there on the spot.”
Explaining where her sassy style stems from: Gioia is intriguingly honest, “People and colors in my surroundings affect me. Last week I was inspired by the Viennese waste collectors (MA48 ), so I went out and got myself a fluorescent orange jacket just like the ones they wear — I've worn it out a few times since.”
Pigs, poultry, and punchy pop packaging all combine to create a beautifully ugly photographic style unlike any other we've seen lately. So unique are Gioia's eye-popping instants that we're almost at a loss for words to describe her. One thing's for sure, though: we'll be waiting with bated breath to see her next analogue instalments.
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