photography

Blue gold is a mystical metal; it could be everything that’s fleetingly shimmering, seducing, gently luring, glinting under the caustic light reflections of water surfaces. Another in-house editorial by house SWARM MAG will drag you down to cobalt depths only to discover Hades’ and Persephone’s guest house that you’ll never want to leave. Shot by Ondřej Szollos.

French photographer Camille Leprince transforms bodies into atmospheric forces through long exposures and oxidizing metals, creating portraits that pulse with erotic vulnerability and sacred darkness. Discover how cinema, intimacy, and the alchemy of time shape his haunting choreography of contemporary heroes in today's interview.

Alex Valentina navigates the fluid boundaries between digital precision and organic spontaneity, creating hybrid worlds where flora meets code and dreams dissolve into UI. Find out how the Milan-based creator uses technology not as an end but as a telepathic tool, chasing creative breadcrumbs through a practice he calls personal archaeology.

Czech photographer Stanislav Palát is the definition of a one-man creative army. In the true spirit of “if it doesn’t exist, make it yourself”, he handles his own set design, lighting, makeup, 3D modelling, accessories, grading, and an array of other skills. The result is photographs with a touch of “Neo-Romantism”, fantasy, and exciting imaginary worlds, straddling the line between a fairytale and a fever dream. Enjoy the interview with the artist below.

Is this a bombastic, ornate, and slightly disturbing version of a foodie heaven? We’ve suspended our freshest editorial in a peculiar type of timelessnes, which is both nostalgic and futuristic, and references the era when food styling was less homogenous and more unhinged. Enjoy a new collab between SWARM MAG, the award-winning photographer duo shotby.us, and Bláznivé bruschetty, an ingenious trio of food designers creating eye-catching and vibrant edible installations.

Miriam Pružincová’s work oscillates between film and photography. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter whether we are looking at a moving or a still image. The stories that her images tell mostly don't happen in front of our eyes anyway. The alien stories we watch need to be experienced and lived beyond their timeline. Why? Because they are stories about our very selves. I jump back and forth between her photos. I scroll through them for a while, then get stuck on a few. I look at the films, then at the photos again, building a story. One minute they make me sad and the next they make me happy. Then I feel both at the same time.

“Every job throws you into a vortex of the unexpected.” Prague-based creative photography duo SHOTBY.US introduces a new photo series called “Sips”. Featuring vibrant colours, abstract amoebic shapes and bits of sweets, the pictures feel like examining specimen samples from a psychedelic pond under a microscope.

Iryna Drahun’s photography is inspired not only by the artist’s post-Soviet roots, but also her interest in AI-generated imagery. With such an augmented shutter, Iryna captures not only the tangible and natural, but also creates worlds of her own which seamlessly fit into her oeuvre. Read today’s interview to learn about her inspirations, creative decisions and views of the future of art in the era of artificial intelligence.

Sessions always involve a lot of laughter. I mean, it's ridiculous what I ask people to do.” DLLCOPE, a self-described “gatherer of bodies, brains, skin, and paint to make images and sounds”, is a Canadian-based artist creating raw diorama-inspired compositions of bodies, paint, and DIY props.

“The nudity is not sexual, really. But it is physical, it is tangible.” Marie Tomanova’s intimate photographic vision has launched her into the international spotlight. In today’s feature, Marie discusses the experiences and inspirations informing her unique work, perspectives and recent book.

“The idea is to use the simple action of putting tights on and taking them off”. In exploring femininity through the symbol of nylons, Polish artist Pola Esther has started a project documenting women with (and without) this soft apparel to find a territory inbetween traditional domesticity and sexual fetishism.

Polish artist Marta Karkosa uses the medium of photography to explore contemporary women’s attitudes to their own bodies, promoting the beauty and uniqueness of every corporeal form. In today’s exclusive interview, Marta goes in-depth into her book Women Body Acceptance, which intimately explores these themes across several generations of women living in a strongly conservative nation-state.

The Netherlands-based Ukrainian photographer Alex Blanco is a seasoned visual storyteller. Her 2016-2019 project is a utopian rendering of her parents in their home city of Odessa, “where the real overlaps with the surreal and everyone was born to shine”. Holding true to this notion, she created intimate and atmospheric shots that helped her reconnect with her family.

1989. China. Czechoslovakia. One meeting place – Moscow. Linda Zhengová’s photo series captures the artist’s complicated family history. Be it living under different communist regimes thousands of kilometers apart, the inherent cultural differences, or even their eventual separation, the KULISHEK series create an intimate narrative of a family forged and fragmented in a globalizing world.

Izraeli photographer and graphic designer Omer Ga'ash creates digitally manipulated composites that treat “the place and the body as a symbiotic system.” Omer's ten-year experience with professional dancing visibly reflects in his work, via a nearly tangible understanding of the possibilities and limits of the body.

Swiss photographer Roger Weiss manipulates our stereotypical perception of bodily beauty via unusual angles and digital distortion to create sculptural, clay-like figures with accentuated and distorted extremities that invite us to untangle and sort them out in our mind. With all redundancy and personality removed, Weiss sees the flesh revert to its ancient raw symbolism.

“I think we should all be asking questions we know we will never have the answers to, because thinking about them gets you as close to the truth as possible.” The Adelaide-based photographer Joseph Häxan tells us about his fascination with biological processes, nature and the photographic medium.

Anya Miroshnichenko’s faceless female bodies challenge the typical “reading” of such “objects”. The Moscow-based artist shifts the question of representation into one of self-perception without losing the focus on family memory and intimacy.

Where does one draw the line between magical thinking and debilitating fixations? Accompanied by illustrative collages, Viktoriia Tymonova meditates on the connections between OCD, ritualism and the middle ages on a search for a “common ground between reality and fiction.”

“I prefer an imperfect but lively drawing.” Belgian native Mathieu Van Assche is adding more (perhaps mythical and ritualistic) layers of meaning to already loaded historical photographs and old masters' paintings.