Through his work, Francisco Russo navigates between realities: his own experience growing up in industrial Los Angeles and the tensions of life in New York’s fashion scene. His lens straddles both personal and alien spaces, where garments and bodies appear foreign to their environments, evoking feelings of displacement and estrangement. Encountering Francisco Russo’s work, with its embrace of crudeness, disarticulated bodies, and desaturated images, I was confronted with a reality and set of intentions starkly different from what I had anticipated.

Cyana-Djoher: How did your journey into photography begin, and how did it evolve into your distinct style? Were there specific imageries that shaped your aesthetic?

Francisco Russo: My style developed very early on, as I’ve always shot film. I found in film a way to better capture a certain "crude" imagery.

I realized I could create my own crude imagery through it, whether in fashion, commercials, or personal projects.

Mastering the staging and composition of these elements led me to develop what I consider my own personal style.

Cyana-Djoher: You transitioned from capturing spontaneous moments to something more curated. How would you define the "crudity" you've spoken about in your work?

F: I would define it as primarily feeling-based rather than visually driven. I believe some of the earlier artists who created fashion images or other work had only their own reality to work with, and they produced images that evoked emotions rather than it just be images.

I think, fashion imagery has often and traditionally been associated with this pretense of overly glamourized and curated realities, which aren't necessarily sources of genuine emotion or relatable storytelling.

Through raw imagery, I found a way to vomit out these feelings, more viscerally.

I'm able to convey what certain music evokes for me, or the emotions tied to colors, backgrounds, feelings associated to some thoughts, and elements that reflect my personal life or my own reality.

Cyana-Djoher: Even in fashion photography, you see the medium as one that captures essential reality rather than constructing fantasy. How do you weave that idea into your work? I believe there’s often a tension between the rawness and edge you seek and the identity of the garments themselves. How do you subvert that tension?

F: I subvert it mainly through movement and by bending the conventions of traditional portraiture. I love the study of contortion, whether on the body, through styling, or by placing the subject in situations where the garment feels foreign to the environment, they’re in or even to the model themselves.

Either they look or feel uncomfortable in it and find ways to feel comfortable. I always push beyond the limits of a basic fashion image.

C: Are you familiar with the concept of "estrangement" by Shklovsky? It’s about the artist becoming foreign to their own work, creating distance to make it more impactful and introduce new perspectives. It’s the need to defamiliarize yourself from your production to view it through a new lens, ultimately uncovering deeper layers of meaning and provoking the same impression in your spectator. Does this resonate with your creative process?

F: Yes, it does resonate. I've realized that feeling comfortable with your work while you're creating it isn't helpful. It promotes you to stay within a box, which can lead to repetition and limit the range of styles or emotions you evoke. I would say my work aligns with this idea because it's essentially a study of comfort through discomfort.

C: Do you implement this concept technically as well? Your work is quite low in saturation and evokes a kind of youthful melancholia, reminiscent of what we experienced growing up in the digital age. It seems to capture the sense of discomfort we often face during the early stages of our lives as teenagers or young adults.

F: I do use it as a tool to create a sense of discomfort for the viewer. Interestingly, it's one of the few things I feel comfortable with, image-wise.

I find paleness to be very beautiful, it's something that always draws my eye.

Growing up near industrial landscapes, I had to force myself to adapt to it, and now those environments offer me a sense of safety, as opposed to the vibrancy of overly curated or more"modern" images. While I understand that these landscapes typically evoke discomfort for most people, I wouldn’t say I intentionally aim to convey "youthful melancholy," though I recognize that it's often associated with my work.

I’d describe myself as more anti-glam.

C: Yes, I think coming from a French perspective, when we think of American suburbia, it often conjures these pale, liminal spaces. But where I grew up, it was more peripheral, more hidden.

F: Yes, that makes a lot of sense, I grew up in Los Angeles, California, in a very industrial part of it. Now I’m based in New York so it’s very different.

C: Your work carries a distinct video game aesthetic, blending the eerie ambiance of Silent Hill with the allure of Indie Sleaze-era New York. Are you intentionally infusing a sense of the virtual into your imagery, does it come from the blending of your influences?

F: When it comes to video games and the Indie Sleaze aesthetic, I think elements of it might be noticeable in some of my more commercial work, but that's not where it stems from. I didn’t grow up playing video games or listening to Indie Sleaze music.

As I’ve moved to New York and gained more exposure to those scenes, I can definitely understand the semblances others do in my work but those themes are quite foreign to my practice.

C: It’s more of an opposite reality that still connects to your work.

F: Yes, I feel like it comes from operating within those spheres and finding ways to create things that resonate with people who actually live those experiences, while still making them fit within my own reality. In doing so, it introduces a sense of displacement or virtuality into my work.

C: How do you incorporate your own reality within your practice then?

F: I think I do this by incorporating emotions or aspects into my images that still feel foreign to me. I find ways to confront the uncomfortable feelings I experience in photography, and I make them familiar through styling, movement, and contortion.

C: Did you experience a shift in both your photography and personal perspective when moving from Los Angeles toNew York? The contrasts between these two cities are quite radical.

F: Yes, in a way, moving to New York provided me with greater access to fashion and a diverse array of faces. My experience of Los Angeles was quite different from the traditional narrative associated with it; it was more remote and suburban, with limited access to culture and other influences. Growing up as a child of immigrants, I encountered various struggles, including religious hardships and a generally more restrictive environment, which I still hold dear.

However, being exposed to realities that contrasted with the typical Hollywood or New York scenes, I found that moving to New York afforded me a newfound sense of freedom.