We were lucky to catch up with Kiva Meulenbeek recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kiva, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

Subscribing to hustle culture is not the key to artistic success nor does it promise creative fulfillment. Every artist I know has seen burnout creep in faster than we realize when we prioritize monetizing artistic expression. More often than not I find myself smashing my head into my desk asking why I haven’t done more, tried harder, or worked faster. Every single time I dive into this world of work culture, I find that not only does my wellbeing suffer greatly, the quality of my work does as well. Taking time to really analyze and FEEL the process of your expression within your craft is exactly where the gold of your art really lives because it’s you and nothing else. For me, these are within the connections I have with the people that I photograph. We each bring a gold piece of ourselves into the room and create something new.

Kiva, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My photography journey started about 6 years ago when one of my old friends gave me a DSLR camera at the end of my college career. It seemed random and I had no idea what to do with it, so I started to take pictures of everything and everyone. This simple experience was insanely life changing. The lens showed me that in this medium I had control in my perspective. I could finally show my view on necessary darkness and had permission to do so through portraiture. I’ve always had a fascination with the dark and unsettling. The creepy, the ugly and the faceless. I’ve always found myself digging around in the shadow side of the people’s (and my own) mind. I believe fear shows more truth than smile and it shouldn’t be something we submit to.
My goal with expressing the creepy side of life is a direct statement on mental health and the continuous battle of keeping conversation with your demons. Showing what they can look like, how they move and what they would say to you has been an immensely helpful tool on my mental health experience. Creating visuals for these monstrous trait’s don’t always come out as something harsh and cold. Surprisingly it’s a freeing and fun experience to be something horrid for a couple of hours and to shed light on the thing you previously couldn’t look at.
I encourage the people I photograph to look at the aspects of themselves and the world that make them wince. I think there’s something insanely powerful about looking into the face of your fears and holding the gaze, let alone attempting to understand it. Approach these things in small steps, speed is never the goal here.
The beauty of the the world lies in the mouth of the labyrinth but the end is only just the end. I’m interested in what lives in the walls of the maze.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think to find creative work rewarding you have to be a feeling based person because the reward is a feeling of connective expression. Being a full time artist is just the experiment of feeling as vastly and as much as possible. It all lies in the connection I have to the people around me and the environment that I place myself in; which is really an underlying theme of freedom to feel and to wonder.

Having the space and time to merge my thoughts and feelings with my work to produce something that a client will absolutely love has always been the most rewarding for me. Getting comments and messages about how my work has influenced someone’s emotions makes me absolutely giddy!

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Creatives put in way more work that you will ever see; people are worth your money.

Every time I battle with pricing around my work it feels like I’m proving that I’m worth being fed. I think most non-creative people forget that they are not only paying for the immediate work that’s being done but the years and years of skill development and outside expenses that brought your creative work to this point of being.

MOST creatives that work for themselves severely undercharge and work for free all of the time IN ADDITION to the end product you’re paying for. Living this way is extremely difficult but also the most rewarding for us. We just want to be able to afford to live and wouldn’t have it any other way.

There are SO many way to support the creatives you love. TIP THEM! Share with your friends (word of mouth is the majority of where creatives find business) share and interact on social media, leave a review on their google page or website, or simply just hire them if you’re able!

Contact Info:

• Website: kjmedialab@gmail.com
• Instagram: @avikjm
• Facebook: Kiva Meulenbeek
• Youtube: KJ Media Lab
• Other: Tiktok: @kjmedialab

Image Credits
Models: Matthew Stella, Joscelyn, Rachel and Myself All photos taken by Kiva Meulenbeek