“With all the end of the world stories we’re exposed to these days with the year of 2012, I felt like using it and having fun creating my own end-of-the-world scenario!” Lorent Kostar tells us of his first ever Ben Trovato story, Dark Athena - The Last Day. “What would be left on earth?” he asks rhetorically. “I created a warrior princess, the only human being surviving in a chaos landscapes. This way, each set of pictures somehow represents one element raging against her : water, earth, fire and air. Our Dark Athena fights them.“
The Paris base photographer doesn’t consider himself a fashion photographer, as much as a story teller, and says he really enjoyed creating something without intention of selling a product: “- My first priority is to have fun telling different stories, and not necessarily to promote clothes. If it is just about selling, it becomes boring, right? For this story I just wanted to have fun by creating a character in a world.”
Lorent watches a lot of movies, which accumulates a great deal of inspiration and references, which he then again applies to some of his work: “- I had no rules for this job, so I felt free to make the setting myself – with touches from «The Fifth Element», «Star Wars», «Gladiator», «The Book of Eli» and so on.”
Playing the part as the post-world warrior princess is French model Awa Ceesay, who was actually awarded Model of the Week on models.com about a year ago. “I wanted a character with a very original face and silhouette, so we get a change from the blond haired girls with blue eyes we see every day in magazines,” Lorent says, and adds: “- That’s why I got in touch with Jon Viatgé, an agent with very good models. He set me up with Awa, very tall, sweet black girl, who was going to star in the role of a warrior princess…”
“Awa had a perfect attitude all along. She’s got this very modern face with amazing extra long legs. I asked her to act as a mean girl although she’s so sweet and smiling in real life! I wish her the best and I am not worried for her career.”
The rest of the team included makeup artist Agathe Pons, hair stylist Jonathan Dadoun and fashion stylists from Frog Agency. “I worked with hair stylist Jonathan Dadoun a few years ago and I have been following him ever since. It was just logical to work with him. Concerning the rest of the team, they’re all people whose works I knew from Internet and I was eager to work with someday.”
“I am sincerely happy to have succeeded in gathering all of them for a very personal job I really wanted to do and I thank them all for participating in the project”
He is especially happy for Frog Agency’s work with the wardrobe, and says they really succeeded in translating his direction into a truly amazing wardrobe. “- They adapted my initial idea into a fantastic fashion shoot.”
Credits
Photography by Lorent Kostar
Styling by Frog Agency
Makeup by Agathe Pons
Hair by Jonathan Dadoun
Model - Awa Ceesay @ IMG Paris
Agent - Scouting One By Jon Viatgé
