The Constant

I own one black suit and it has been photographed more than most people. That isn't minimalism. It's method. When the wardrobe never changes, everything else has to: the light, the angle, the temperature of the room, the distance between my chin and my collarbone. Photographers who work with me learn quickly that I treat a red gel and a teal gel as two different countries, and that I can hold the border between them without moving a muscle.

Stillness is my actual profession. Modelling is just what it looks like from the outside. I trained as a dancer until I was nineteen, which taught me where every part of me is at all times, and then I discovered I was better at the pause between movements than the movements themselves. Smoke machines, long exposures, projection light, a marble bust that outweighs me: I've held all of them steady. Give me a mark on the floor and a reason, and I will stand in your beam until the picture arrives.

The rest of the time I'm in Kyiv, in a flat with tall windows and a wall I repaint whenever a job leaves a colour stuck in my head. It has been fire-orange, then verdigris, then a violet I still defend. My grandmother thinks I should buy a second suit. She's wrong, but I let her say it: every family needs one running argument, and ours at least photographs well.