Making of : Exogenesis by Alessandra Kila
Alessandra Kila is a photographer and close friend of ours. She pops in and out of the studio nearly every week and when she asked us to help her with her new series of images, we were as usual very happy to collaborate on her fantastical voyage to another planet as her work is just unlike anything else. And it’s stunning!
In this series called Exogenesis (or Life Outside of Earth) Alessandra ventures to unfamiliar territories looking for life forms beyond our planet. In her pictures the carefully constructed sets are overturned by the surprise of the unexpected. Alessandra is indeed an avid collector of oddities. All of the organic matter encountered in her still life comes from places she travels to – from the Atlas mountain of Morocco to the slate quarries of Snowdonia.
When she goes on a trip she always takes with her empty boxes and rucksacks that she then fills with stones, rusted metal wires, seeds, flowers and everything else she stumbles upon. She then re-assembles everything in her studio creating new juxtapositions which are both evocative and surreal.
We helped her in creating the lush colours of these fantastical worlds by refining the strong tonalities of her pictures and by blending together the many layers that form these not-so-still still life photographs.
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