'this is freedom': yorgos lanthimos on photography beyond cinema

"You can be alone, with a camera in your hand, and you can walk. In that moment, the medium sheds the expectations attached to narrative production. You don't need to have something specific in your mind. You don't need to have in mind that you have to do something with it at some point. This is freedom."

"You immediately learn in film school that cinema is 24 frames per second. So technically you have to learn photography first. I didn't know from the start that I would be so interested in photography. Initially, the still image existed only as preparation."

Yorgos Lanthimos, renowned filmmaker behind works like Dogtooth and The Favourite, has increasingly embraced photography as a distinct creative medium. Unlike cinema's collaborative complexity requiring crews, budgets, and schedules, photography enables solitary encounters with the world. Lanthimos describes the fundamental freedom of walking with a camera without predetermined intentions or obligations. His relationship with photography evolved from film school necessity—learning still images as technical foundation for cinema—into genuine artistic interest. The medium's autonomy and independence from narrative production demands have become central to his creative practice in recent years.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine