Roman Safronov

I photograph people. I began in Ukraine, in Mariupol, where I became known for portraits, mostly of women, shot in the studio under one controlled light and finished in black and white or in a single dominant colour.

In April 2021 I turned away from my usual subject. FAVNS, my solo show at the Vezha creative space in Mariupol, was made entirely of men: bare torsos, horns, part of it shot out in the forest. I named it after Faunus, the Roman god of fields and woodland. The exhibition opened with a portrait of Volodymyr Miski-Ohly, the Mariupol artist I thought of as a kindred spirit and a mentor, who had died two years earlier. We shared a love of Picasso. I said at the time that the work was groundwork for something larger I meant to make in Mariupol.

I am a Ukrainian photographer in Ireland, and I work across the European Union.

The photographs above are my selected work: studio portraits, beauty and fashion, and a smaller run shot on location. What holds them together is not a genre but a way of looking. Close in on the face, one source of light, nothing in the frame that does not earn its place, and a subject who meets the lens rather than hides from it.