This week my favourite creative is Veruschka, a model who transcended beauty and transformed into an artist and photographer. She’s someone I’m inspired by for various reasons but predominantly, it’s her adventurous approach to creating images.

Veruschka would often use body paint and camouflage herself within weird settings, painting her skin to look like a cheetah or a stone. She would then contort herself into positions in which she was almost camouflaged by her surroundings. A lot of her work was shot outside in the wild and it seems as though many of her skills were picked up throughout her extensive modelling career.

Veruschka worked with many legendary and incredibly famous photographers, like Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton. By working with these photographers I think she picked up on the skills that they possessed when it came to their photographic artistry; developing from subject to creator.

I think she began modelling in the sixties, she had this amazing face, with big wide set eyes, and although she was a stunning model, it’s actually her later work that I find interesting, when she began to create and control her own visuals.

I think she’s a really good symbol for women infiltrating a seemingly masculine domain and owning it with their own feminine power. From starting as a model, learning the skills of her own, then stepping up to create and produce images herself is completely inspiring. To be this unusual character – brave enough to play around with the ideals she projects in her images – she seems a little kooky and that’s what draws me to her even more.

She’s interesting. She’s beautiful. That’s why I love her.

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