PROJECT
People are influenced, changed and transformed by their environment. The music we love, the films we discuss, the jobs we are devoted to or simply tolerate affect who we are, what we wear, how we speak, what we think and even how our bodies look like.
This very delicate but inevitable metamorphosis is the core subject for TRANSFORMED BY: project.
Photographed, written and conceived by photographer & journalist Helen Mayorova.
Phase One. TRANSFORMED BY: Pet Shop Boys
April-September 2018
British electronic duo Pet Shop Boys has been making contemporary intellectual dance music since 1986. With hits like West End Girls, It’s a Sin, Being Boring, Can you forgive her?, The Pop Kids and many more they have established themselves as forever changing yet always recognizable god fathers of pop.
Vocalist and lyricist Neil Tennant and composer and keyboard player Chris Lowe have developed a very special image full of both style and surreal approach to fashion. Being passionate about new trends, theater and contemporary art they pioneered computer generated videos with super-strange clips for songs like Go West or Liberation and invented their own peculiar well recognizable world which includes certain colour patterns, costumes and other visual identity and mixes it with great catchy tunes and serious lyrics often mentioning very complicated and un-pop subjects.
Mostly designed by Farrow Design their records are an example of minimalistic but vivid style.
Pet Shop Boys followers or so-called Petheads are much influenced by the band. For more than 3 decades they have been choosing jobs, clothes and hobbies to mach their icons.
TRANSFORMED BY: visualizes the perception of the band in a series of staged photographs based on Pet Shop Boys imagery. Photographs are to appear batch by batch during April-July 2018.
TRANSFORMED BY: also portrays long-time Pet Shop Boys fans from all over the world who have send in their photographs and written stories of their obsession.
Phase One. TRANSFORMED BY: Pet Shop Boys co-creator, model, props designer and painter is Helene Vasileva
Phase Two. TRANSFORMED BY: abuse
December 2019
These photographs depict us tortured and deformed with fear caused by abuse, both mental and physical.