Image: Untitled - from The Wish series. © James Bellorini 2021

This image comes from a shoot this summer made for an ongoing project that looks at the experience of belonging in mixed-heritage and migratory people. It’s an extension of the work I made for my Master’s Degree (from which I graduated in January 2021).

Food features in a lot of this work as a motif because the people I've been working with (myself included) have such a strong connection to it. It is, after all, a strong part of cultural history. Hence the Korean Pear that Yunha is holding here.

I'm in my best space when working collaboratively. It takes me outside of myself and reminds me that being a photographer is not all about ‘me’. The biggest boon is the back and forth flow of ideas between people working toward a similar goal. It's constantly exciting and refreshing. The seed of an idea grows into something new and unexpected as it meets the fertile ground of someone’s else practice and changes, moves forward. 

In this case, there's Yunha in front of the camera, and behind the scenes Zoe the stylist, and make-up artist Annabelle.

I don’t use the word model as it implies a kind of employed ‘vessel’ for my vision and I don’t work like that. There is a process I go through with everyone I would like to work with. And that is all about building a relationship: talking to them in advance about their own inspirations, their memories, and where they connect with what I'm proposing in terms of the photo shoot and why I'm engaging in that work at that time.

Here we were playing with ideas of snow (something that Yunha had talked about when we first met) and making wishes, the wind playing with the various types of material we were using to ‘represent’ snow.