Photographer and Talent Sasha Elage – Interview by Melania Musci
Your first encounter with art was through painting, not photography. In your opinion, what do these two artistic practices have in common?
Painting and photography have always been connected in my mind, not because they use the same tools or techniques, but because they both carry the responsibility of vision. What interests me most are the painters who truly shifted something, the ones who altered the way we see the world. I am speaking of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, of those rare individuals like Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse, who did not just reproduce what was in front of them but proposed something else entirely. A new way to feel space, a new way to understand light, a new form of beauty. I believe that today, if we take our role seriously, photographers must aim for the same thing. We are not here to document reality like machines or make screenshots of what already exists. That is not enough. We are here to reshape perception, to reinvent presence. The world is not fixed, and the way we see it should not be either. In many ways, I believe the true painters of the twenty-first century are those photographers who dare to propose a new vision, one that does not imitate but transforms, one that does not look back but opens the eye toward something more alive, more mysterious, and more necessary.
Since embracing photography at 24, you’ve built a distinctive body of work. Is there a particular image from your early work that still resonates with you? What makes it memorable?
What surprises me most is how deeply my very first photographs still resonate with the work I am doing today. I arrived very late to photography, but I had been looking for a long time. For years I was observing the world with a kind of quiet obsession, without even realizing I was already training my eye. So when I finally picked up a camera at twenty-four, something opened instantly. I remember very clearly a specific moment that changed everything for me. I had broken a CD and placed a small piece of its pink plastic in front of the flash. Suddenly the light turned pink, and in that instant, I understood that I could paint with light. Not just capture it, but shape it. Transform it. I could alter emotion through the temperature of color, through intensity and tone, and this changed my understanding of what photography could be. That early image, created within the first week or two of touching a camera, still carries something sacred for me. It was the moment I understood that photography could be magic. But I never relied on the magic alone. It had to serve something deeper. The flash, the color, the atmosphere, they were only part of the whole. The image still needed to hold weight on its own through composition, exposure, the meaning behind the gesture. It reminded me of painters who dared to depict mountains in pink or orange, who knew that perception is not fixed, that light can alter everything, and that the courage to see differently is sometimes what gives an image its life. In that way, this first photograph became a small revolution for me. A quiet discovery that still guides me today.
One of the distinctive aspects of your work is your refusal to use Photoshop or any other kind of post-production. Have you always followed this philosophy, or did you experiment with editing at the beginning of your journey? If not, what led you to avoid it entirely?
From the very beginning, I knew I didn’t want to rely on post-production to create my images. What inspires me most are the photographers who managed to make magic happen in the real world, without needing to alter it afterwards. I never understood the idea of taking a photograph in a careless way, only to spend hours behind a screen trying to fix or enhance it. That process never appealed to me. I come from a love of live music, where what moves you is the immediacy of sound, the presence of the gesture. A musician with a guitar plugged directly into an amp can make you vibrate. There is something raw and alive in that moment. Of course, there are incredible DJs who create complex soundscapes through machines and layers, and I respect that, but it is a different approach. The same goes for photography. A photographer, for me, is someone who works with the world as it is, with light, with time, with presence. Not someone who hides behind a computer to reconstruct what was missed. Over the years, I have had many people ask to use my photographs, sometimes even well-known painters or digital artists who wanted to alter them, to paint over them, or to remix them into something else entirely. But that never felt right to me. I want the image to stand as it is. I want the emotion to be born in the moment, not manufactured later. And although in the early years many people dismissed this philosophy, they would laugh and say, why not use Photoshop, what is the problem, I stayed true to it. And now, twenty years later, I see more and more photographers proudly stating no Photoshop, no AI, as if it were a badge of honor. What once seemed strange to others now feels necessary. I was not trying to be right, I was just trying to stay honest.
The arrival of AI and other generative technologies is transforming the creative industry at an impressive pace. Does this worry you or influence the way you approach your work?
I am not worried. I think the fascination with AI is real, and the visuals it can generate will become more and more convincing, maybe even astonishing. But the presence of a new tool does not erase the value of what came before. When Photoshop became popular, I never used it. Not because I was rejecting technology, but because I never felt the need. I never understood the obsession with filters, presets, or color grading packs. I never learned how they work, and I never felt I was missing anything. Today, that aesthetic already feels tired. You scroll through pages where every image has the same tone, the same feeling, and it leaves you cold. So in a way, I think AI is just another wave. Some people will ride it brilliantly. Some will get lost in it. But photography will remain because its magic is too deep to disappear. Without photography, there would be no cinema, no archives, no collective memory in the visual sense. It is not just a medium, it is a way of seeing and remembering. Even if AI creates endless images, it will not replace the moment when light touches the lens and something true is captured. I believe people will still search for something real, something made by a human standing in a place, feeling something, responding to the world with their own eyes and heart. And maybe more than ever, we will need that. In a world where almost anyone can take a picture, it does not mean everyone becomes a photographer. It just means the role of the true photographer becomes even more vital, to remind us what it means to look, to feel, to remember with clarity and soul.
You recently released your first book, Murmuration. How did the idea for this project come about, and why did you choose to publish this body of work before others you had previously planned?
Originally, I was working on a very different book, a much larger project based on my many trips to Iceland. I had already gathered a strong body of work, but I kept postponing its release because I felt that a few images were still missing. I wanted to begin with something unforgettable. From the very beginning, I wanted to start with the magnum opus. I imagined a book that would be the best I could possibly make, the most complete, the most ambitious. But in the meantime, something more intimate and unexpected took shape. My community kept asking me for a book, something they could hold, something real. And I knew it was time to offer something. Murmuration was born during a strange and heavy moment. We were in lockdown. We were only allowed to leave the house for one hour a day, and only within a one-kilometer radius. I was living in Nice at the time, and not far from my home there was a small public garden. Every winter, the starlings gather there before continuing their journey to Africa. I started going there every day, trying to photograph them within the tight limits of time and space. It was very frustrating. Sometimes I stayed longer than I was allowed. I broke curfew. I was even stopped by the police a few times because I was out with my camera when I was not supposed to be. But I needed to be there. I needed to witness these birds tracing their invisible maps in the sky. That dance, those formations, that feeling of chaos turning into harmony, it gave me hope. And from that, this small
book was born. It is my first one and it means a great deal to me. But I am also preparing something much larger. Magic Island will be released soon, hopefully this fall. It will be a much bigger object, more like a box than a book. It will have a hard cover, more pages, and many surprises inside. I have been building it quietly in the background, waiting for the right moment to let it go. And this is only the beginning. I have a great deal of work that I have never shared, some of it very personal, some of it waiting for the right form. I am falling more and more in love with the process of making books, not only as collections of images but as complete objects, as spaces where a certain atmosphere can live and grow from page to page. Each book teaches me something. Each one becomes more precise, more coherent, more alive. And I feel that the more I make, the more I understand how to make them. So starting next year, I hope to release three or four books a year. That is my plan. Not just to publish, but to create a rhythm, a body of work that lives in print, that can be touched and held and returned to. There is nothing like a photography book. And I know this is only the beginning of something much larger.
You’ve described your photography as suggesting a different vision of the world. What makes a subject or a moment interesting enough for you to photograph?
I honestly do not know. If I did, maybe I would be able to take powerful photographs every day. But it does not work like that, at least not for me. It is still a mystery. There are days when nothing happens, when the world feels flat and unreachable, and then suddenly something shifts, the light changes, the air feels different, a presence appears, and I feel drawn to it. But I never really know why. I do not work with checklists or rules. I do not go out looking for something specific. The moment has to appear. It has to come with the right atmosphere, the right tension, the right silence. And most of the time I only understand afterwards why it mattered. The more I photograph, the more I realise how little I understand about photography. And I like it that way. I never wanted photography to become a science. I never wanted to master it completely. The not knowing keeps it alive. It keeps me alert. Mystery is not something I fear, it is something I protect. It is the space where the image can still surprise me. And maybe that is what makes an image good for me, when it feels like it came from somewhere else, when it arrives like a secret that just revealed itself for a second and then disappeared.
Having grown up between Lebanon and Russia, and now living in France, how have these places shaped your personal development? Do you see traces of that journey reflected in your photographic work?
Absolutely. Being exposed to different cultures and learning to speak different languages has changed me in ways I cannot fully describe. It has made me more curious, more tolerant, more open to what I do not know. Every time I travel, I feel that I am expanding a little. I become more attentive. I become more humble. I learn from the people I meet, from their rhythms, from their landscapes, from their silences. I never felt the need to belong to one single identity. When I am in Iceland, I try to live like someone from there. I listen to how they speak, how they see the world. I try to pick up their words, to enter their language if only for a moment, to get closer to something that cannot be translated. When I am in France or in Italy or in any other place, I try to do the same. I do not believe in building walls around who we are. I believe in letting the world shape you. So yes, I suppose this way of being has shaped my photography too. It has taught me to see with different eyes, to move between perspectives, to listen more closely. I know it sounds like a cliché to say I feel like a citizen of the world, but I truly do. I carry fragments of many places inside me, and maybe that is what I am always trying to reflect in my work, not a fixed identity, but a constant act of becoming.
In recent years, your image captions have become more and more poetic and introspective. Writing seems to be a growing part of your practice. Is this something you’ve been intentionally cultivating?
Thank you very much. That is very flattering to hear. To be honest, a few years ago I was really struggling with writing. When I started to post more regularly on Instagram, I hated doing the captions. It felt unnatural. I did not know what to say. I had always believed that the photographs should speak for themselves, that they should carry their own silence, their own power, without needing to be explained. So for a long time, I avoided writing as much as I could. But little by little, I started making an effort. It was not easy. Writing never came naturally to me. But the more I wrote, the more I realized how powerful it can be to accompany an image with a few honest words. Not to explain the photograph, not to control how people read it, but to offer a small window into the feeling or the atmosphere that surrounded it. And slowly, something began to shift. I started to enjoy the process. I started to hear from people that my words were touching them as much as the images. That surprised me. I never saw myself that way. I never thought of myself as a writer. Now it is growing. I still find it hard, but I am learning to trust it. I am beginning to understand that sometimes words can deepen a photograph, not by defining it, but by extending its emotion in a new direction. And yes, I think it is something I will continue to explore with more care in the future.
If you could shake hands with any artist, past or present, who would it be?
If I had to choose one person, I think it would be Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He is a Turkish film director and also a photographer, and there is something in his work that I feel deeply connected to. It is not just admiration. It is something more intimate, more strange. Sometimes when I watch his films, I have the feeling that I understand exactly what he is trying to express. Not just as a viewer,but as someone who feels the same things, who notices the same silences, who is drawn to the same kind of light. His characters carry a tension that never fully explodes. His landscapes feel like states of mind. There is no need to rush anything. Everything unfolds slowly, with care and space. And visually, his work is extraordinary. Every frame feels like a photograph, full of precision, stillness, and emotion. I know he also photographs, and you can feel it in the way he composes his scenes. It is not only about narrative, but about atmosphere, about perception, about time. That is something I relate to deeply. I am not a filmmaker, at least not yet, but I do not exclude the idea of making a film one day. And if that ever happens, I know that what I have learned from watching his work, and from feeling so close to his sensibility, will remain somewhere inside me, as a quiet influence.
What’s next for you?
I want to take this work further. Over the past months, I have received hundreds of messages from people who tell me they never cared about photography until they discovered my images. Many of them say they usually find photography boring or distant, but something in my work changed that. So I want to continue opening that door. I want to bring photography to new people, to show that it is not dead, that it can still move you, still shake something awake inside you. I want to make more books, and propose more prints, to build objects that carry atmosphere and meaning. I want to show the work more in real life, not just online. I want to collaborate across disciplines, explore film, explore sound, and create spaces where images can breathe. And because this is becoming bigger than me, I am now looking to build a team. I want to work with people who are brilliant in their fields, who can help with promotion, structure, communication, so I can stay fully focused on creating. I am ready to go to the next level, and I want to do it with people who have vision, courage, and the desire to build something timeless.