Talk with Rebecca Dorothy
The self-portraits allowed me to enter the world of erotic and naked photography. They have always been a therapy for me. Thanks to the self-portraits I discovered my body, my sensuality and femininity.
My name is Rebecca Dorothy, I am a roman photographer born in 1993. I currently live in Paris but I often come back for long periods in my old city, Berlin, for projects or exhibitions.
Since I was little, my mum was obsessed with memories and thanks to her I cultived the passion for photography. I grew up in Rome, with a great desire to explore and get to know as many things as possible, I began to address myself in the field of erotic photography and as a result this has pushed me to change city and move to Berlin where I was able to express my art to the best of my ability and broaden my horizons.
In my work, I explore the body and sensuality in a overwhelming sea of colors, entering the most intimate and secret moments of lovers, friends and acquaintances. With my photography I want to tell stories that blend between reality and fantasy, love and passion, naked and in swimsuit.
Without a doubt, the most significant city for me and for the development of my photographic style has been Berlin. In this city, I discovered myself but most of all the right way to express myself without feeling judged. Berlin opens your mind a lot, it gives you the freedom to do whatever you want to do, it brings you closer to cultures and ways of life from all over the world because it is a multi-ethnic city. Here there is always something new and funny to do and there is always some new person to know and that can inspire you. It is challenging because most of the people you know has creative crafts and are almost always very open to create something with you or to partecipate in your projects.
I have to say that Rome has always blocked me from an artistic point of view regarding erotic photography. Unfortunately, not every one is open to artistic nudity and often everything related to it is associated with porn or the forbidden, that is why I can hardly inspire or make exhibitions there.
Paris is a city I am still discovering – I’ve been living here for almost a year. A city rich in cultural and artistic events, it offers you the way to inspire and enrich yourself culturally as you want and whenever you want. I just find that here people are busier and the rhythms of life are very hectic, so often organizing shootings even with friends it becomes an undertaking, and you end up sending them back to the beginning wasting a lot of time.
I can’t classify any of my experiences as the most significant. Each of them brought me something positive and each one taught me something more. From being an assistant to a fashion photographer, to organize a shooting in collaboration with other photographers, from the exhibition in Greece to the one two blocks away. Every single experience, every single shot for me is meaningful and constructive.
I love to use saturated colors because they make everything more surreal. I have the feeling of creating new dimensions and new sensations thanks to the colors. I am inspired by many known and not known photographers, especially thanks to Instagram which is always a great source of inspiration. The main phorographers I am inspired from are Alva Bernadine and his sensual surrealism. Nadia Lee Cohen and her comedy, Petra Collins and her romanticism and melancholy, Arvida Bystrom and her sensuality and femininity.
I always try to represent the bodies in all their naturalness, beauty and sensuality. In order to highlight, i am always looking for the most hidden details , trying to access the uniqueness of each body with its own special features.
I want to strip away all the shame and insecurity that I have in front of me when I photograph. I want my model to forget reality to enter a world of sensuality and femininity. Almost like a game, as if no one was watching. I love to transmit the beauty hidden behind every body, freeing it from stereotypes and canons. My goal is to raise my model’s self-esteem and make her feel like a queen, a goddess.
One thing I always say is “The most beautiful photos always come when there is feeling”. It happened that i have organized shootings and then trashed entire projects. The feeling, understanding and collaboration are fundamental to the success of a good project.
My habits before photographing someone, especially those I don’t know, are simple but effective. I always try to meet one or more times with a model before shooting to get to know each other and break the ice, then I try to use and choose objects and clothing with which he/she fells comfortable . And finally I must confess that the panacea of a glass of wine help a lot to find the feeling and enter the mood.
I am a detail freak, I am always very attentive to everything that surrounds me, I like to observe and get to the bottom of things, so I think I transmit this feature involuntarily even in my way of photographing.
The self-portraits allowed me to enter the world of erotic and naked photography. They have always been a therapy for me. Thanks to the self-portraits I discovered my body, my sensuality and femininity. I’ve always been very insicure about myself, about my big legs or my pronounced nose and it is only thanks to photography that I’ve been able to look at myself with different eyes and especially to like myself. So through them I want to convey the defeat of insecure and fears, to show my body and my defects with the revenge of sensuality and harmony.
I think that freedom is about being able to express oneself through artistic and creative processes, freeing oneself from the fear of the judgement of others. Paranoia and fear are the antagonists of freedom , and sometimes they block the creative process of many talented hidden artists. The color that most represents me is blue, it is almost always. The blue represents my origins and therefore the sea of Sicily, more specifically the sea of Catania, the birthplace of my father. I find blue as a joyful and mysterious color which makes me feel calm and gives me serenity, a color that also binds to my element, water. I can say that I spent more time into the water than in the park with friends during my adolescence, all this thanks to my other great passion: swimming.
In my future , photography , family and friends will surely not be missing. I have many projects in my mind for the future, including to create a photo book (would be the first one for me), but I still have to choose the theme because I always have too many ideas and I can’t decide and organize them. I also have in my mind photographic projects of reportage and study of anatomy of the body.
I hope that the recovery from the quarantine will allow me to develop all my projects and especially to travel to continue some ongoing projects such as “Miguel” or another project about families and Sicily.
The expression that most inspires me and represents me is : ” A photograph never existed in my head before the shot : i see what there is, i vibrate with what there is , i love what there is ,i get excited seeing what there is”.
Lisetta Carmi
Rebecca DorothyRoma- Paris – Berlin www.rebeccadorothyx.com