Diary Entry / First Time Backstage

A photographer’s first analogue descent at BFW covering Milk of Lime, Haderlump, Clara Colette Miramon.

Berlin Fashion Week doesn’t wait. Backstage hits you fast. Sweat, lights, lashes, bodies moving in every direction. No one tells you where to go. No one slows down. You just shoot, breathe, keep up. It’s messy, loud, and kind of perfect.

I wasn’t ready.
I thought I was — but no.

The second I stepped backstage, it hit me: the noise, the sweat, the impossible beauty of it all. Someone was screaming about hair. Someone else half-naked, eating a banana with the calm of a monk.

I stood there, camera in hand. Invisible and in the way at the same time.
I shot anyway.

Flash. Model. Makeup brush. Flash again.

It smelled like hairspray, cigarettes, fear, and something floral I couldn’t place.
I didn’t know anyone’s name. They didn’t know mine.
But for a second at a time when someone looked straight into my lens, wide-eyed, exhausted, annoyed: we saw each other. And that was enough.

The clothes looked like sculpture.
The people wearing them looked like ghosts.
Beautiful, tired ghosts.

At one point, someone asked if I was “with someone.” I lied and said yes.
Then I went back out and kept shooting, real moments, posed and not.
Sometimes I asked. Sometimes I didn’t.

That’s what this is. This job. This week. This world.

Fashion in Berlin: constantly shifting, breaking, remaking itself.
A city where every season feels like a restart button.
You fall apart. Then you step back in.

Hands shaking. Film half shot.
I got what I could. I missed half of it.
But I was there.
I saw it.
And that has to count for something.

If you’re reading this believe me:
In its own chaotic way, it was NASTY.

Diary Entry / First Time Backstage

Photo & Diary: Giovanni Bilanzuoli / @giovannybilanzuoli
Editor: Anca Macavei / @ancamacavei
Designers: Milk of Lime, Haderlump, Clara Colette Miramon
@milk_of_lime, @haderlump.berlin, @claracolettemiramon
Event: Berlin Fashion Week / @berlinfashionweek

You may also like

Wolfgang Tillmans / Thee eyes are subversive

Photography | Spotlight
A spotlight on one of the most influential photographers working today, Wolfgang Tillmans, who in 2000, was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize, marking the first time the prize had been awarded to a photographer or non-British artist.

Günter Brus / The divided self

Art&Culture | Spotlight
The pain show, a body that has almost disappeared: a spotlight on the Austrian artist Günter Brus, performer and film maker, one of the of the founders of Viennese Actionism.

Helmut Lang’s abstract mythologies

Art&Culture | Words
Scratching the surface and striking your soul, Helmut Lang's first institutional solo exhibition in the US on view at Dallas Contemporary until 21 August, 2016. Words by Anca Macavei.
Social CogVanishing Silhouette / Jordan Roth