Marta Syrko

When Marta Syrko was 15, owning a Canon camera was something she had to work towards. Her grandfather, who was blind, gave her money to help her buy her first camera, while Marta worked to afford the rest, and later the lenses she needed to complete her kit. Almost 16 years later, becoming a Canon Ambassador feels like a tribute to that teenage version of herself.

"I remember that I didn't have the money for the Canon camera I wanted (an EOS 5D Mark III), and I was working really hard to get it," she says. "It's like a gesture to the girl I was then."

That idea is at its most powerful in her ongoing Sculpture Soldiers project. Marta had photographed different bodies long before Russia invaded Ukraine, but a visit to the Louvre, where she saw Greco-Roman sculptures missing limbs, prompted her to think differently about society's response to bodies changed by war. She began photographing veterans, drawing on the artistic vocabulary of classical sculpture to challenge conventional ideas of beauty. "The main question to the audience is: what is beauty?" she says. "Why is a person who has lost a limb not considered beautiful, while someone who has had surgery to conform to a conventional idea of beauty is accepted as beautiful?"

Marta is careful not to romanticise trauma. "I'm not trying to say that everything is beautiful," she says. "I'm trying to explain that we are all different, and that something can happen to any of us. For me, this is about acceptance."

She has now made around 27 portraits and says the response has reinforced how important that acceptance can be. "We all want to be part of society. You really want to be accepted, especially when you are a little different."

Marta's artistic identity also carries into commercial commissions. For Dutch National Opera & Ballet, she created 21 campaign images, bringing her own approach to the body, colour and art-historical references to a diverse range of productions. After years of adapting her style to clients, she says she has reached a point where major organisations increasingly commission her precisely because they want her visual signature.

The Canon EOS R5 is now at the centre of her work. Marta also increasingly moves between stills and video, using the camera's ability to switch quickly between the two modes to capture slow-motion studies of movement, water, light and expression during her shoots.

Her practice continues to expand beyond individual photographs, and she is currently developing an international book project. But whether she is making commercial work or confronting changing ideas of beauty in Ukraine, the same principle remains at the heart of it all: art history provides the reference point, while lived experience gives it new meaning.

How does your knowledge of art history influence the photographs you make?

"Everything has been made before in some way, so as artists we use references to remember or recall something that already existed, but we have to make our own interpretation of it. For me, the important thing is to provide the context of the time you are living in now. I use references to art history in my work, but they are always connected to something that I am experiencing today. I have to take that experience through myself and then share my interpretation with the audience."


What makes a photograph beautiful to you?

"For me, everything has to work together. There is the narrative, and the story, but also the composition, the lighting and, when it is in colour, the harmony of the colour. A photograph can be very simple – it could even just be a person against a white background – but you can still see whether the photographer has an artistic point of view. I don't think there is only one ingredient that makes a beautiful image. It's how all those elements work together."


How do you know when an idea needs video rather than a still photograph?

"I use video when I need to draw attention to something that develops slowly, such as a feeling, an emotion on somebody's face, movement in water or the way light changes. I like that with the Canon EOS R5 I can be photographing and then switch very quickly into video. I often make slow-motion footage during my shoots because sometimes movement or a very small emotional change needs time. A photograph can hold one moment, but video allows me to show how that moment develops."


What piece of Canon kit can you not live without, and why?

"The 35mm is my favourite focal length because it gives me enough width to build layers of light, reflections and environment around my subjects, while still retaining the intimacy of a portrait."


What else could we discover in your kitbag that helps you elevate your work?

"A small mirror. I use mirrors a lot in my work because I like to create depth and different layers within the picture. I also carry a few filters for working with sunlight. These are simple things, but they give me more ways to change what is happening with the light in front of the camera."

"Photography is hard work. When people say that a photographer just pushes a button, it isn't true – they probably haven't ever tried it. You have to understand the technical side, but you also need to understand lighting, composition, context and what you are trying to say. Making the picture is only one small part of the work."

Website: martasyrko.com

Instagram: @martasyrko