Katarzyna Seiler: How did you come up with the idea for a body-positive boudoir photography of women?

Monika Kozub: I traveled a lot before coming to Berlin. In Amsterdam, I started working as a photographer offering Airbnb Experiences. I decided that I would use my photography skills I gained from the education at Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow to take pictures of people who came on vacation to Amsterdam. After our walk, they received a set of portraits, a souvenir from the trip. When I started doing Airbnb Experiences after I moved to Berlin, most of my clients were women – very excited to be photographed. You could see that they had spiffed up, pardon my language, and looked fantastic. But some of them felt abashed. To encourage them, I started talking to them.

KS: Rather “Playboy” than body positivity.

MK: I always think that if you expressed your consent, the photographer agreed as well and you feel good about the style of the photos, then do whatever makes you happy. From my conversations with women and from my own experience, I knew that women have the need to derive strength and joy from their sexuality, yet not on someone else’s, but on their own terms. I found that boudoir photography is a perfect way to challenge the insecurities I knew from my own life. As long as I was wearing clothes that covered my pale skin, imperfections and cellulite, because I generally fit in with the tall, thin, white girl pattern, I felt comfortable with myself. But when I had to take the clothes off, whether in a changing room at school before PE or at a pool, I immediately tensed up. I was scared that everyone would see me taking my push-up bra and it would be obvious that my tits are fake.

Women come to me looking exactly as they are everyday – naturally, but they define what this natural look means to them. They bring clothes that matter to them.

KS: In one of the first photos on Instagram, you write that you first wanted to test different poses yourself, so as not to offer women anything that would be uncomfortable. You took these photos yourself or asked your boyfriend for help.

MK: Poses that look good in photos are often terribly uncomfortable. First, I made a board on Pinterest, where I saved various photos. I decided to check them out and see how I actually feel in these positions. I looked at a photo and it seemed to me that a model was sitting comfortably, but actually it turned out that to hold the pose from the photo I had to remember to pull in my stomach and straighten another part of my body at the same time, and that was just too much. My boyfriend guided me: “Here you still have to raise your foot a little, move slightly, straighten there”. I realized that if I started talking to any other woman like that, she would completely lose her head.

Someone once said that people can forget what you told them, but they will never forget how you made them feel. This is the most important thing for me in the photo sessions.

I have always been deeply rooted in contemporary art, but I did not like the fact that many art initiatives completely ignore the so-called Kowalski and Kowalska [considered to be most common names in Poland – footnote for English speaking reader]. It’s a very hermetic environment, mostly for those who are already interested in modern art. I felt that it did not suit me at all. As a student of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, I taught modern art classes for high school students who were going to apply for the Academy themselves. Very often they asked accurate questions that made me reconsider the canon of art that was instilled in me when, for example, something is overloaded with theory but doesn’t carry emotions understandable for an average person. Hence my need to implement a socially engaged project where people are already present. For example on Instagram. I didn’t want to take a series of photos that would then be shown in a small gallery to people who are not suprised when they see folds of fat. In modern art, it’s normal to shock, so it doesn’t really shock anyone.

I want to show my photos to people who still think a woman has to look like the ones in a Victoria’s Secret or Playboy ad.

Maybe thanks to that I will help them see that woman’s body can look very differently and there is no single canon of what is beautiful, and on the other hand, that maybe someone who until now believed that feminism equals “women with armpit hair”, they will see my photos and notice that feminists are beautiful women.

KS: I observe a trend, for example on TikTok, that girls have boudoir sessions that are probably more like the sessions you talked about at the beginning, which are then given to the husband or partner as a gift in the form of framed photos or an album. This entire session, underwear and styling are a gift for a man, not a woman. Of course, she also probably enjoys it, but she does it with him in mind and at the end records his reaction when he sees her photos for the first time.

I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. I shared that with my therapist and admitted that I didn’t know if it was caused by sweatpants I wore every day or that I wasn’t wearing any makeup for quite a while, but I was convinced that such things shouldn’t have an impact on me. The therapist made me think about the myth of Aphrodite. We have the story depicted in numerous artworks: Aphrodite born out of the sea foam, everyone else looking at her and seeing the most beautiful woman in the world.

My therapist told me that in the original myth when Aphrodite was born, there weren’t any audiences clapping and telling her how beautiful she was. Aphrodite was born in solitary and began to look around and point on the beauty she saw around her. This made her the goddess of beauty.

Her appearance didn’t matter at all. I combined it immediately with what Caitlin Moran wrote: in the moment you stop focusing on begin an object of beauty for someone else’s gaze and judgement, and put yourself in the position of a judge, you flip the perspective. You no longer have to show these photos to your husband to prove to him you are beautiful. You can have these photos taken for your own sake and tell him: “I think I’m beautiful.”

KS: Which stories from your photo shoots you remember the most?

MK: A photo shoot of the woman, who at that point in time, was the oldest woman I have photographed. I was so happy that a woman over 50 is willing to get such photos taken, and more over – she thinks it’s going to be an amazing experience for her.

KS: Do you see photos similar to yours in German media? In Poland, unfortunately, even if the media uses the slogan “body positivity”, realistic images of the female body do not follow it.

MK: In Germany, or at least in Berlin, such a thing wouldn’t fly. There is a need to change even among the brands I work with. Unfortunately, it still often comes down to having one plus size person or, as I call it, a curvy model. I don’t like the term plus size, because it means that there is some “size” and the rest of it is “plus”.

I once read an article on authenticity in the world of marketing and fashion. It explained that this industry will never choose to show authenticity. That the revolution must start elsewhere – among people who will not accept that such a limited selection of body types is portrayed in advertising. Advertisers will always aspire to the unattainable. They are selling dreams. It’s not in their best interest to show you something you don’t have to aspire to. Perhaps this is an element that we can only break down by changing our minds and showing in spaces like Instagram or other social media or even a movie industry the whole spectrum of what a body can look like.

KS: Apart from the photo shoots you also have a podcast “Boudoir Talk.”

MK: I’m often labelled as a photographer, and on one hand I’m fine with it, but on the other it’s a simplification. I consider myself an artist, who uses photography to talk about certain issues. But sometimes I user other media as well. Recently I created my own Instagram filter. These filters usually change your appearance, but I made one that doesn’t change the way you look, only adds a flower crown on your head hand drawn by me.