ROYAL ARTS VISIONS; ELENA CHEPAK

Photography is maybe the most sensible art form. When it comes to describe Elena Chepak I will use 3 words : emotional, sensitive, talented. Looking at her photography collections, especially the images with wild horses or racing horses, I can easily feel the artist's need for freedom. Born in Bielorussia, relocated in United Arab Emirates, Elena Chepak' artworks are dedicated to humans, horses and nature. Profoundly sensible, experiencing art as a beautiful, complex concept of unity, spirituality, freedom of expression.

The photography created by Elena is not about light and shadows. Her art is all about emotions creating bridges between two nations, her native land and her country of adoption.
The wild expressivity, the subjects, the entire artistic atmosphere of her photographic collection is in fact a celebration. The artist celebrates the colours of her own soul mirrored innocently, brilliantly in marvelous artworks.

You are living between 2 cultures (European and Emirati). How do you reflect this mélange in your artwork, your photography?
I am glad to hear this question. Intercultural Communication was the subject I studied at my University. And I thought I am pretty aware of what communication and intercultural communication is. But there is always a place for surprise. University gave a great theoretical knowledge, but life is giving us valuable practical lessons so that we are constantly learning and coming across situations we have never met before. That is the beauty of life and inspiration for creative people like me. Even though I can be considered as an “experienced immigrant”: I got the chance to live/work in South Africa, In Russia, travelled to many countries but moving to Middle East still wasn’t an easy task for me. There is one thing when you travel to a country for holidays and it is completely different if you live and work there. It is a road full of challenges that requires from you to be flexible and open to new things. It took me a around a year to adapt and start seeing things from a comfortable perspective. Cultural shock that is something that always comes to people no matter how experienced they are. Throughout that year of establishment, I learnt a lot, met many people with different cultural, religious backgrounds. And I was glad to see that in any culture, in any country, in any religion core values are same. This is what unites people. I am glad to see that Emirati culture has core values which are similar to my culture as well: attitude towards family, respect towards women, strong traditions and care for their unique culture.

Since I started my new career as a photographer in UAE ( at first I was organizing projects for clients gathering different professionals in teams, then I noticed that clients started asking me in particular to become their photographer, so another shift happened and I started studying photography and photographing myself.) Photography is a great tool for communication, I believe it is one of the common languages that unites a lot of people. It can be a great psychological tool as well. I am a portrait photographer and one of my tasks during the shoot is to make the person to feel comfortable in order to get emotions that are sincere and not well played. And the best way to do it is through conversation. I photograph normal people, not models and you cannot imagine how many deep stories start from a sentence “well, you know… I am not photogenic”. The perception of beauty changed due to fashion, trends and cultures influence. A lot of people feel shy to accept themselves as beautiful because they think that standards of beauty are different. My task as a photographer to show them that their thinking was stereotypical and wrong and show them their best. It is obviously an honor to see them using my portraits for years it is just proves my point.

I believe a mélange of cultures happening inside of me and then it reflects in the way how I change. My personality, my approach to people, allowing to see other side of the medal. I start seeing things which were not open to me before. Let say how to photograph people at events correctly, which signs they give you if they don’t want to be photographed (it’s not always direct and obvious), how to photograph details so it doesn’t look ridiculous and doesn’t make people laugh or feel uncomfortable.
Sometimes I even feel myself as a tree hanging with its roots in the sky. With all the new experience I gained in other countries I feel sometimes that I no longer fit in my home environment as I used to. On one hand you are gaining something on the other - loosing, like in my case becoming more cosmopolitan person.
Photography has its own way of communication and delivering a message.
A message that can be clear for many people from different backgrounds.

What is your favorite artistic subject to capture and present in your photos and why?
I am still considered a young professional in the field of photography. But for the past 3 years I managed to try myself in many directions as well as I started studying cinematography on my own. In 2019 I even tried myself as a Film Director I managed to gather a team of enthusiasts to participate at the Film Festival. We even won in the Concept category.

After trying out many things I decided that Women Portraits and Equestrian Portraits are my favorite subjects. There are projects that support my living and allow me to earn money and others are purely for my soul. I am in love with horses from a very young age. I don’t remember how it happened, but it’s one of those stories when you just see and understand that its yours. I can’t say I was lucky to spend my childhood with horses and my family was never connected to the equestrian world. There was always a distance or a barrier between me and horses. Horse photography inspires me and allows my soul to rest as well as giving me the opportunity to be closer to these animals. Being next to them is like having energy reload, getting the energy that I lost on other activities. No wonder horses considered as magic creatures in many cultures. Surely, I would love to continue my photographic journey connected to horses. Hopefully will get a chance to share my work at my personal exhibition in the near future. But meanwhile I am gathering material for that.

Which artist was influential for your artistic visions? Do you have a personal artistic statement?
Influential…Well, I guess I can mention the ones who inspired me but I cannot name the one who influenced me. Peter Lindbergh made me fall in love for Black and White photography, Annie Leibovitz inspired me by her way of telling a story, Jonna Jinton from Sweden inspired me with her love to the nature and to the place called home, Salvador Dali showed me power of imagination.
I believe I am still on my way in finding myself in the world of Art. I just started my journey and I simply apply my own values and criteria of what I consider beautiful.
At the same time, I believe we started getting overwhelmed with “fake” in our lives: fake people, fake news, fake lives, fake popularity, fake emotions, fake communication.
And it leads to empty feeling inside, you subconsciously feel there is something wrong but the world tells you “NO THAT’S TRENDY, THAT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO”.

I long more for “real and true”. When it comes to women portraits I don’t overuse Photoshop, make up etc, it’s important to show the person from inside, with no fake smiles even if I have to spend more time in order to get right emotion, in this case photo will keep the warmth of their emotions and won’t be shameful to show this photo even in 10 years time. Back to nature, back to what is called being real that is what attracts me.

How do you reflect the reality the nowadays social, cultural transformations and movements in your photography?
I believe time of my personal reflection has not come yet. Considering the density of events happening it will take some time to reflect. Things are changing, nothing stays on its place as it used to be. Have a look at how photography evolved throughout times and where it is now. During Era of Instagram and smartphones photography became more affordable for everybody but still not everybody considered as a photographer.
The perception of photography is changing, professional photographers have to adjust to the new reality too. Although it can be a nightmare for classic photographers to see Instagram and its filters but we cannot deny that its affecting us and not just in a bad way.
For example, with Instagram we discover talented people who couldn’t even think of opportunity of being noticed; we get to see other nations from different continents on the pictures in one app. This type of progress definitely moved borders and made distance among people less allowing us to learn from each other and get to know each other more.
With the development of digital world and Virtual Reality we are able to combine classics and futuristic. Nowadays you can see paintings of famous artist done in 3d allowing it viewer to see all the details. “Digital travelling” and seeing things online gave opportunities for the ones who might not afford doing it. Imagine how cool it would be to have a digital tour to the place where you have spent your young years and see everything the way it used to be. I believe visual arts can turn into a completely new way and start serving new purposes. Lets see where this journey brings us!.

Monica Mergiu

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