Yasmina Hilal’s work combines the odd with the mesmerizing
Can you tell us a little bit about your formation and experience as an artist?
It all started when my mother gave me my first film camera at the age of 15, and that’s when I discovered my love for photography. Then I challenged myself and went to college to study filmmaking in Boston at Emerson college, that’s when I started experimenting with film photography and I also minored in photography.
From 2015 to 2018, I was a dark room monitor, which taught me the ins and outs of using camera equipment, like using 16 mm for example and experimenting with negatives. This was where my combination of analog techniques and alternative techniques flourished and where I learned to do my photography.
I am a freelance photographer and I’ve been published in many reputable publications including, L’Orient Le Jour, Dazed, Harper’s Bazaar Arabia. I was also commissioned as a fashion photographer for Fashion Trust Arabia, NPR, Highsnobiety as a featured creative and more. I worked for Vice Arabia. I shot for fashion designers such as Yasmine Saleh, Bokja, Maison Pyramid etc. I also earned the Visual Media Award and the Johnathan Hard Fridenberg Award.
How do you create your collages? Can you describe your artistic process?
My process starts with photographing my subjects intimately on film. From there it’s all trial and error when it comes to collaging. My main focus is the combination of alternative techniques with analog photography. Each film is processed and scanned from start to finish. Then I begin to use different techniques such as cutting, sewing or splicing without ever relying on digital manipulation. It usually takes me a while and I don’t mass produce.
I focus every time on different techniques, stapling, using ink, printing on different types of paper etc.
It all depends on textures for me. I think textures and layering are big things in my work.
What is your work about? Why fashion photography?
I think my work is a reflection of myself. I use art as a form of trauma therapy. It’s really about the idea of being in a city that shaped who I am as a person. It’s about the obstacles you go through in life, the ones that create some form of scar. To me, scars are a form of beauty and survival. I feel like my images aren't portrayed at their finest until they are chopped up or manipulated. To show that standards of beauty and standard living is not something everyone goes through. That’s my idea, to create these caricatures that are sometimes large, sometimes larger than life, sometimes double. Just to show the different aspects of things.
Fashion photography is nice because for me I've always had a love for fashion, I enjoy vintage wear and these types of shapes that fashion creates and that plays a big element in how the image stands out. It’s very important to me to go through it with a stylist first and see what works well and the composition. It really stands out when it’s done well. Fashion plays a big role in making my images stand out.
What does the snake in the shoot with model Zaria Michelle represent to you?
The way the snake moves, it has no form no shape it creates these beautiful shapes with its body. You can see the snake as a negative perception. it’s poisonous, it slides, it’s slithering but I see it as beautiful in a way. It is loud but it’s still soft in the way it moves. That’s how I portray my work, It’s in your face but then when you look in detail you see how it moves together.
Which artists inspire you? From where do you get your inspiration?
I like Diane Arbus, her portraiture of characters and odd looking figures. For me that’s the idea, to create this oddity. There’s this amazing collage artist named Dan Eldon. He passed away a while ago. I also admire Ren Hang.
