About Warp Records, the Carpathian Mountains, and Saving 6 Foxes

Featuring Synchrodogs Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski

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Unexpected, stopping the stare and filling the senses with an incredible boost of inspiration, absorbing your existence with the enormity of the bigger element. Nature reveals itself in a wide range of colors, emphasizing the beauty of its merge with the person caught in its lap. The characters’ proportions are incommensurable to the surroundings, but the presence is overwhelming with meaning and empowering. The approach to this merge generates a positive feeling of possibilities and hope.   

According to Synchrodogs, dreams can be divided into two sub-genres, one that can predict the future and the other that inspires life with surreal visionary images energizing the creative process. Finding the individual path can only come from personal values, authenticity, and a differentiated perspective that brings a fresh angle on reality. Synchrodogs’ bigger goal is to lead towards change in preserving nature and environment, through their love and passion to increase awareness and knowledge of current global issues.

Synchrodogs are a duo of photographers from Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, consisting of Tania Shcheglova and Roman Noven. They have recently come from their regular, yearly trip to the Carpathian mountains during which we have contacted the duo. In this interview, we discuss the becoming of the Synchrodogs, the main focus to inspire the viewer and raising awareness to nature, the impact dreams have on their work, and the charity project that aspires to bring some joy during this Christmas to the kids from Yabluniv orphanage.

Visit the upcoming solo show in Jest Gallery Turin, Italy (October - November 2019).

‘Every year we go to the Carpathian mountains for several months, it gives us the opportunity to live in nature for a while, observe the environment as our art is often centered around issues nature is facing.’

Hi guys, thank you so much for your time and your openness. How are you doing these days?

Quite busy. This year is highly productive. We are working on personal projects and creating really a lot. Also, we are working on exhibitions a lot, had solo shows in Barcelona, Milano, Turin, Kiev recently.

Last time we spoke you’ve been in the mountains with almost no wi-fi connection. Tell about this experience and where did you choose to hike?  

Every year we go to the Carpathian mountains for several months, it gives us the opportunity to live in nature for a while, observe the environment as our art is often centered around issues nature is facing. For us some days are a kind of meditation, other days are vice versa full of adrenaline and danger as we are traveling with an Enduro motorbike. It is a shake-up overall. 

What do you think started your career, or in other words, what was the most prominent factor to ignite your growth and recognition?

We are shooting together for 12 years, so back in the days, there was a time when Instagram was not popular yet, but other social media like Flickr or Deviant Art were used a lot, they were not giving enough visibility but still were a way to show your work. We were shooting a lot, just experimenting, and in 2010, many blogs and magazine websites suddenly became popular, it was some kind of a boom for them. We remember Dazed published our photographs, and many blogs reblogged them, they became viral, it was a very weird experience for us as before we never thought we were doing art. But the prominent factor for us to ignite recognition was that we were always working a lot, and tried doing it our own way, developing some recognizable style that would distinguish us from the rest of the world.

‘We always wanted our art to be inspirational for people in a way that would stimulate them to spend more time in nature and lead a less urbanized kind of life.’

We have been speaking with some duo photographers like Cesar Love Alexandre and Katie and Joe Bauer and working together is usually a merge of perspectives that finds its creative output. Tell about your dynamics of working together and how is it different from the experience of a single photographer on set.   

We are very used to working together and fully trust that each of us can deliver the same best results either together or separately. We were lucky enough to meet each other - a person with the same ideas, tastes, perceptions, and love for nature (that's where the name Synchrodogs came from).

When you first met what were you doing back then, and what did you think of each other’s work? 

We were photographers before we met, which happened on the photography website (where we both had accounts). We intuitively liked each other's works as otherwise, we would not be pulled together.

The state of our planet and the environment is a very deer topic to you that is often presented in your works evoking feelings and thoughts. What are the additional means you find useful or important to deliver the message or to make even a small change with the lack of information and knowledge with the masses? 

Apart from giving awareness to some really important environmental issues, we always wanted our art to be inspirational for people in a way that would stimulate them to spend more time in nature and lead a less urbanized kind of life, that would be educational on some very subtle level where all people love nature to the extent of not willing to do any harm to it.

Your work puts a certain emphasis on discovering beauty in nature as the environment and nature of the human’s body. When traveling or in the daily routine, do you also choose to live near nature or you prefer big cities? 

We try to escape cities regularly to find some inner balance. The truth is that we need big cities for career matters, but we also need nature for our souls. 

What was the last book you read, what was it about? 

We actually are now in search of a perfect book that would suit our mood. Tania reads one new book by Erich Maria Remarque every year, she loves the positive vibe of the books, in spite of all the difficult circumstances in every story.

‘Night dreams do play a really important role in our lives. Not only do we take a lot of ideas from them and later recreate in art projects, but we also see night dreams that predict the future really often.’

Today it seems that the challenge to be noticed on social media is even bigger. Instagram announced that 'likes' will be eliminated from the accounts, which has already been rolled out in several countries. What is your tip to growing social accounts? 

We like taking care of our social media personally, curating posts, writing texts, and credits. We just make one post per day not to overwhelm people.

You develop and work through the lucid dreaming technique to feed the inspiration and present new works. What was the most bizarre dream you remember that perhaps even felt like a future prediction? Did you ever make a series of it? 

Night dreams do play a really important role in our lives. Not only do we take a lot of ideas from them and later recreate in art projects, but we also see night dreams that predict the future really often. They are not literal, all happens figuratively, but the main thing is to understand whether you feel good or bad after the dream, did you feel scared, or ashamed, or vice-versa inspired, full of joy in the dream. This is what determines whether something good or bad will happen in several following days. 

The other kind of dreams we also see from time to time is some spectacular surreal visuals that unfortunately are not possible to be recreated with photography, but we make notes of them and remember them for years, they are that highest level of inspiration for us not even in art, just in life, giving a very powerful boost of energy.

Tell about one of your recent commercial projects, as Bimba y Lola or Kenzo, what is the main difference in approaching this type of work and what do you find as the most enjoyable part in it? 

We love doing both art and fashion photography it keeps us busy and never bored when we switch from one to another. We like that clients usually trust us when they contact us. We never get contacted by clients who expect to get, for instance, classic black and white portraits (even though we are sure we can do them as well). It means we are expected to do something interesting and fresh, and it gives us some extent of freedom.

Recently we shot a campaign for the 30th anniversary of one of the biggest record labels in the world, Warp Records. Our pictures are now on vinyl covers of Flying Lotus, Bibio, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Mount Kimbie, and many more. This is the most enjoyable part!

‘This year we really want to be able to buy Christmas presents for 49 kids in Yabluniv orphanage.’

What are doing apart from photographing? How do you like to spend your time?  

We have an Enduro motorbike and love riding it to some wild places like mountains. Roman likes making music, meeting with friends to jam from time to time. Tania has a charity project, for which she makes unique jewelry pieces out of beads we collect while traveling all over the world, it is called Crystaltania. All the money from sales goes to different charitable purposes, one season we bought books and games for kids in orphanages, another season we bought out 6 foxes from poachers who were going to kill them for fur (yes, we now have our own foxes, they live with animal rescue team, getting all proper treatment and love), the next season we fulfilled dreams of kids from poor families, overall we are choosing different directions all the time. This year we really want to be able to buy Christmas presents for 49 kids in Yabluniv orphanage.

If you would go and buy plane tickets for tomorrow, what would be your location?  

Andaman Islands.

What are you working on, and what is your next project about? 

We were shooting in the mountains a lot this year, and now we're working on every shot to be ready for print, those will take part in exhibitions, and film scans need to be clean and perfect. So now it's more time for giving final touches to a big work that was already done, rather than starting something new. These days we are also opening a solo show in Jest Gallery (Turin, Italy), which will be up in October-November, showing a Ukraine project, a partly documentary project, come!