Secret Life Of A (Fashion) Photographer: Eduardo Acierno
Ever wondered what a typical day in the life of a photographer looks like? We are giving you more insight into the life of Eduardo Acierno, a fashion photographer based in sunny Mexico. Enjoy Eduardo’s vivid photographs taken exclusively for the newest segment in our magazine.
When I was asked by the Lomography team to send 5 pictures documenting “secret life of a fashion photographer" I instantly thought: “Pff, I’ve been documenting my life for years on a visual diary, this should be easy. As I ventured everywhere with my camera in hands I started giving more thought into what my “life” outside the fashion industry was like, everything I did, all the places I went to, they were all extremely common. I kept thinking that I was going to eventually find out something I did that was outside the ordinary, but I was wrong.
Whenever I’m not working on a set or on location with beautiful models and attending fancy parties with people from the industry, I’m just a regular 21-year-old who is still trying to figure out what life is all about. Once I accepted the fact that my life wasn’t as secret or special as I thought it would be, I just simply decided to go along with my weekly plans and carry my camera around, here’s a selection of a 36 exposure roll shot in a 30 day span of my life in Mexico City. I live in a sunny studio apartment south bound from the city, where the grass is a little greener and the air cleaner. I fall asleep under neon red lights and wait until the rising sun peaks through my curtains to announce a new day.
Sometimes I lay awake at night anxious about the rest of my week, will I have enough money to pay rent next month? Am I booking enough stuff to keep my work circulating? Am I falling behind in school? Thousands of thoughts invade my head and fill me with fear of the unknown, I’m slowly learning to take things as they come and change whatever I can’t accept. I have a cat called Veruca, I rescued her a year ago and I don’t know what my life would be without this tub full of love waiting for me to come back home. It doesn’t matter what day it is or the time, I can always count on Veruca greeting me at the door whenever I get home.
I’ve slowly turned my room into the place I call home, many pieces from past trips, gifts from friends and foreign art is hanging on the plain white walls that make up my room.
Which is sometimes turned into a fitting room for shoots.
Most people love partying in between week days, but then there’s me; having barely any time to eat properly in a busy day, I occasionally end up settling for cup noodles and cheap wine as I spend my time locked in my “work space” aka my bed, editing thousands of photos.
Whenever I’m not a fashion photographer, I’m a student majoring in Mechanical Engineer. That’s right, I have a secret life 4 hours a day where I spend my time wearing a lab coat, running tests on engines and electrical circuits. Sadly, eight years of experience in the fashion industry have taught me how replaceable we are and how hard it is to make it in this industry as a freelance artist, this lead me to spend 4 years of my life majoring in something I’m not passionate about, but that I know will eventually help me get by in life.
I have Wednesdays off, that’s the only day of the week where I’m not required to be a photographer or an engineer, so I try to make the best out of those sacred 24 hours, doing what I love the most, walking around the city.
Living in a big city can get quite lonely, people are always working or doing something for a living, nobody has time for anything, that’s why I spend my free time wandering around lonely (and sometimes forgotten) places of the city. It’s either museums or amusement parks or empty shopping malls or botanic gardens, I happen to enjoy solitude every once in a while in this mess of a concrete jungle, it’s the only time of the week where I’m able to walk around freely listening to my favorite songs, capturing things with my camera and chasing light til the sun sets and it’s time to take the train back home.
That’s one of the many amazing things about living in a city, there’s always something going on, whether it is a friend to visit, a party to crash, a concert to attend, you don’t need to look hard enough before finding a place to drink your heart out and dance until the sun rises. My weekends are full of neon drenched lights, acid trips and live music, sometimes mixed with wild adventures with friends and endless nights with loved ones, I try to make the best out of those 3 days where I can simply forget every responsibility I might have and let the nigh surprise me.
As I look through these photos I keep telling myself that my life should be more interesting, I know there are many things I might have left out, but that’s the thing. You can’t live out of a routine, it eventually gets boring and leads into some kind of depression of sorts. Maybe a different timing would have let me photograph myself at the beach back home in the coast of Mexico, or road tripping to the mountains to drop acid with my best friends, but this is just a glimpse of my everyday life, and I’m trying to make the best out of it.
All photographs shown in this article were used by the permission of Eduardo Acierno. If you want to see more of his work, follow Eduardo on Instagram and check out his Website.
written by Ivana Džamić on 2016-11-28 #people
