We met online on a Monday night in the city. Similar to the first time we talked and conceptualized, we were both in the middle of different strides and there was a sense of rush in the air. Though, I guess there wasn't the pelting rain of Milan consistently in the background, or the awkwardness of trying to get to know someone while also attempting to create something genuine and beautiful.

We chatted about everything in our catch-up: from jobs to being back home and Deun Ivory.  We made a full circle on some of the sparks we first chatted about in early October, investigating our own wellness and how that translates through our visual storytelling and the such.

Ebahi Ikharo: 

Photography has been healing for me these past few months… I'd look back at old photos of me and realize I wasn’t seeing who I really was, which was a big wake-up call for me... Recently, my work has been focused on improving my quality of life, and those around me. My healing and wellness weren't complete until I started to see myself, literally.

But how do we transcend to others through storytelling? And become an active part in the larger conversations happening around the world? How do you create essence and beauty through it all?

Kendall Hill:

Does storytelling require experience or vision? How do you connect your life across different paths and thoughts to become the person you want to be tomorrow?

EI: I think it takes both - I don’t think it’s necessary to have experience or history to begin your journey. I’ve been sitting with the fact that I’m not perfect with a camera (a perfectionist mindset that is sometimes limiting). I also feel like if I don’t have a portfolio of work, no one will take me seriously. BUT - that still requires doing something, then attaching that to your other work that has meaning… but who is the meaning for? What value does it bring or not bring?

I want my storytelling to carry conversation. You don’t need experience, but it adds to the quality of what you do. Like when I look at your book... what's it called? Feverdreams? I ask myself, is that the way you first thought the work would come out when you thought of it?

KH: I feel like… yeah. "Feverdreams" wasn’t the first thing I thought of. I always had vision, but when i was starting, I didn’t care much about my larger portfolio of work. I just wanted to create - it’s a very adult thing to care about your portfolio, you know? When I first began creating, I was young and in school. There was space for trial and error which was good for me, in all areas of my life. In my adult life, that was having a job to support my creative practice. I guess the theme is I always needed space to dream freely and make work at my own pace. 

What’s more important than vision and anything else, is time… You can have all the ideas in the world, but it takes years to get things right. The book came out how I first imagined, but there were many different ideas that didn’t come to light that were different versions of that final product that final book. Anyone can have an idea, but not many people have the know now to put A to Z together. It takes more than ability to make your ideas and dreams come true, is my opinion. 

EI: In this world where money is such a real thing, and being recognized for the work helps sustain you to make more art, I just think it’s interesting to easily dismiss the just doing of making work. Sometimes I’ve gotten “you just don’t love it enough” or romanticizing the prodigy artists that started young, alluding to your point of how much it takes to get to a space of being very comfortable and doing work that is acclaimed, get you funding, everything. I think that’s beautiful, but I don’t know if there are spaces that talk enough about the artists that don’t have all that, and aren’t making it. 

I grew up in a house where the arts were not a thing, and where I focused on academics. I think there are a lot of limiting beliefs I am working through. Sometimes it just feels there's is no space for the artist who is starting out like right now, and places to find ways to land as you land as you trust the process. 

KH: But people’s journeys are different. You and I were working at the same show in Milan, even though you’re in the first years of your career and I’m in year ten

EI: That's true... I guess whether it's exploration now or exploration 5 years from now - you still need time, At some point it’s like how much time are you wasting not taking that first step? That’s what I’m mainly working on.. how do you put the vision in place? And trusting what my own process looks like.

EI: Do you feel proud of the work we did?

KH: Absolutely. I love it. I think it’s some great work, and going to turn some heads too.

EI: Yeah… it’s just so interesting how everything came together, I think. 

KH: In what way?

EI: I think that it’s…. It felt like the perfect combination of time and place and people and collaboration and creatives… I also think about how sometimes our work is in alignment with the universe, you know? With Giada too. The conversations, the colors, everything coming together. I just thought it was beautiful. We all had our own ways of interpreting it, but it came together so beautifully, and how it all came to be..

KH: I’m a person who pretty much always goes on intuition in my work and creativity. You can’t force good things to happen, you can only plan them. I try not to lose sight of vision during that process, I just don’t force it, and leave room for intuition. It's like, you need to know you have strong elements coming together, and trust those things will do right when they all come together. An idea ready to come to fruition is all about trusting the process. Finding the balance between having an idea and leaving it to the day you make it makes it beautiful. 

EI: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it ate.

Team

Ebahi Ikharo - Model 

Bianca Prundeanu - Fashion Design and Clothing

Giada Bettineschi - Stylist 

Anna Vierhout - Assistant

Kendall Hill - Photographer