Documenting Life with Cystic Fibrosis

Podcast: Download (Duration: 27:16 — 23.8MB)

In this interview, I speak with Commercial Photographer Katarina Premfors. We discuss life as a photographer in Dubai as well as her recent As week photographing ballet dancers for a 2020 calendar in aid of the Foundation of Cystic Fibrosis in Italy.

This interview is a companion to the comprehensive written article on The Phoblographer.com.

About the project, in her own words:

I am a commercial photographer whose first love is editorial photography above all else, when The National Ballet Studio in Dubai asked me to come up with some ideas for street ballet I jumped at the chance. With no budget, we quickly decided that Dubai was not the place to shoot. It had become prohibitively expensive to secure a shooting permit. We decided to go to the Sharjah Art Foundation which supports art in all its forms. We did in the end sneak up on a roof in Dubai for the last part of the shoot.

Six months later I was asked to come and spend a week photographing ballet dancers for a 2020 calendar in aid of the Foundation of Cystic Fibrosis in Italy. At the end of the school term, on our way to Sweden for the summer, my young children in tow I stepped out on the Mont Blanc Glacier and started planning the shoot, in Italian and in a biting wind. I had left Dubai in 50c heat and a few hours later I was on the ice. Cystic Fibrosis affects many of the mountain guides in Italy and the area so it was only fitting we did some of the shots at 3600 m on a glacier, tethered to each other, in a glacial lake and on the side of a rock face.

About Katarina Premfors:

Katarina is a Dubai based freelance photographer covering the Middle East since 1992.

She was born in Sweden, raised between Pakistan, Turkey, and North America before launching her commercial career in the Middle-East over twenty-eight years ago.

She works across a multitude of editorial and commercial genres, and have delivered multi-national campaigns for a broad spectrum of world-leading private and public sector enterprises. Her clients include global advertising and branding agencies, major corporations, and the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

Her work is regularly published in The New York Times, Fast Company, The Guardian, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Greenpeace, and others. And she regularly exhibits personal and editorial work.

She is also a Fujifilm X Ambassador and a member of the global group Women Photograph whose mission is to shift the gender makeup of the photojournalism community and ensure that our industry's chief storytellers are as diverse as the communities they hope to represent.

Editor’s Note: This is a sponsored blog post from Fujifilm.

About FUJIFILM North America Corporation (Fujifilm)

FUJIFILM North America Corporation (Fujifilm) is empowering photographers and filmmakers everywhere to build their legacies through sharing their stories. Grounded in its 85-year history of manufacturing photographic and cinema film, pioneering technologies in lenses and coatings, and driving innovation in developing mirrorless digital camera technologies, Fujifilm continues to be at the center of every storyteller’s creative vision.

Pushing boundaries in digital photography and filmmaking innovations, Fujifilm’s X Series and GFX family of mirrorless digital cameras and FUJINON lenses yield exceptional image quality for creators of all levels. Offering image clarity, advanced color reproduction technologies and a wide range of film simulations, Fujifilm’s family of mirrorless digital cameras delivers on fulfilling their intrinsic mission of capturing and preserving moments for generations to come.

With a Fujifilm digital camera at your fingertips, you can seize the moment, share your story and build your legacy. Learn more on our website.

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