Artist Research - Ilona Gerasymova

Ilona Gerasymova is a concert, music and portrait photographer from Prague, Czech Republic who has worked with famous bands and musicians such as Sum 41, Demotional and Smash Into Pieces as well as popular festivals, records labels, and publications in Czech Republic. The photographic work of Ilona Gerasymova focuses on documenting scenes of emotion, movement, performance, and lighting to emphasize the atmosphere she captures within her photographs, often focusing on the angles of her compositions as though looking at the venue and performances from the perspective of the audience, performers, and backstage crew through mainly wide shots.

As someone with an interest in the specialism of music, performance, and concert photography, I
decided that looking at and researching the work of Ilona Gerasymova would be best for learning a lot more information about this area of photography which will then be developed further in later interviews with music industry, concert, and performance photographers. By researching and analysing the work of Ilona Gerasymova, I discovered that her style of photographing the performers, audience and venues relies a lot upon the formal elements of tones, shapes, colours, and lighting to emphasize the atmosphere and mood captured through the lighting, stage setup and designs and motions that is going on around her within the concert venues either onstage or in with the audience. 

Many of Ilona Gerasymova’s photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds and leading lines of focus, ranging her compositions from close-ups to wide shots to document the performer, the audience, stage setups, and the venue around the stage to show how these factors have been deliberately arranged and structured prior to the concert to have a major impact on the atmosphere of the show and venue as well as the emotions of the audience and performers, which is often made obvious through photographs focused on their faces or on capturing their movements around the stage. Since Ilona Gerasymova documents her photographic works from the perspective of the performers and audience, looking out over the stage and the performers and sometimes the audience – focusing on creating intense photographic images that document the emotions state and motions of the performers on stage. By doing this she creates photographs filled with dark shadows that contrast with the coloured stage designs and lighting to illuminate the musicians and performers, creating a focus point on their emotions of elation, joy and high energy as well as creating a sense of intimacy through her close-up photographs of the bands on stage.

Ilona Gerasymova’s photographs are focused on the formal elements of tones, shapes, colours, and
lighting created through the artificial lighting and stage designs around the venue which are captured within her photographic imagery of the live performances and concerts. The photographer uses the intense shadows combined with the coloured lighting within her photographs to draw the attention of her target audience to the silhouette, motions, and emotional expressions on the performer’s face, emphasizing the feelings of joy and elation and combining them with the stark contrast of the stage design and lighting to further emphasize these emotions and atmospheres. By also creating these contrasts the photographs can also seem more intimate as the attention is drawn immediately to the performers within her photographs and the narrowed spaces around them – for example documenting the drummer through the gaps in their drum kit setup.  

The way that Ilona Gerasymova documents the formal elements of tone and lighting within her work to portray intense emotions of joy, elation and high energy which is shared between the audience and the performers on the stage from the perspective of the audience or other performers onstage, looking out over the other band members, the audience and the venue, which is something that I find interesting and would like to experiment with portraying further within my own work as I have always had an interest in the experimentation of showing emotions and emphasizing specific atmospheres and moods within my own photographic work and how that can often change for my sitters both in public and privately. I plan to gain further information into this specialism through further artist analysis and interviews with professionals within this area of the industry regarding their own experiences and photographic works.