Herring & Herring is a collaboration between Dimitri Scheblanov (Russia/USA) and Jesper Carlsen (Denmark/USA), engaging in fashion photography. The team's photographic approach is based upon concept rather than a singular style. Their aim is to continuously push the boundaries of story telling through an ever-expanding visual vernacular.

Julie Psaila : Hi Dimitri and Jesper. How did you meet?
Dimitri Scheblanov and Jesper Carlsen :
D: It was actually a really strange meeting. I was dating a girl who had found out she was pregnant but wasn't sure if it was by me or another guy she had been seeing. The other guy happened to be Jesper! We both kind of took care of her during the pregnancy and got to be friends. We were both surprised (to say the least) when the she finally gave birth to a black baby boy. As you can see Jesper and I are both white as rice. That experience had brought us closer together. One thing let to another and we decided to do a shoot together, one shoot turned into two and then we saw that we really had a great chemistry and decided to work together exclusively.
J: We met on an advertising project for a mutual friend’s NYC based restaurant group. The project never ended up happening but we had a great connection and decided that we wanted to do something together. Coming from two very different backgrounds we shopped around for a while and tried a few different ideas together but ended up deciding that we really wanted to work more on our photography together. Our first editorial together was our XXXRAY series, which received a lot of attention and that way letting us know that we were spot on having chosen fashion photography as our tool to collaborate.

What is the speciality of each of you?
D: I art direct the shoots and initiate the concepts for them. My background is in fine Art and Advertising. I studied sculpture and design at Cooper Union and then got into advertising and branding on the luxury/fashion side. I try to bring my past experiences in photography, film, music, and architecture into our work when appropriate.

How could you define your style?
D: We have intentionally tried to stay away from a single "style". Although there are certain reoccurring modes in our work, we really try to approach each shoot from a fresh perspective. To us it is very boring to look at a photographer's book and see the same image over and over again- we try to combat that in our own work.
J: Think the fact that we work as a team and are very interested in story telling rather than just producing fashion images sets us apart from a lot of other photographers out there. Style is something we always will be searching for and refining.

For you what is a beautiful picture?
D: For me it’s seeing something unexpected. Obviously color and form have a lot to do with it, but apart from obvious critique and prerequisites, a beautiful picture is effortless, or looks seemingly effortless. There is also something that is indefinable which I would describe as having “life” to it. There are some photos that are great but “dead” while others might not be perfect looking but are full of “life”, which makes them truly beautiful.

What inspires you?
J : Inspiration can come from all very different places… Can be light, color, model, location etc… The main thing I think is to visualize your idea or concepts before actually producing it. Again, we tend to meet up and discuss our ideas and then later we bring in the stylists and hair & make-up artists to get their view on the idea.
D: The same things that inspire everyone else.

What are your plans?
D: We plan to continue making great work and searching for new ways to express our ideas. A lot of photographers have been doing videos which are basically moving editorials, this seems kind of boring to us so we are currently working on a series of videos which are very different from anything like that.