We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Perla Maarek a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Perla, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful projects I work on are when the location and model inspire me. I am lucky enough to say I cannot pick only one project as there has been many. As an artist there is nothing more meaningful than being turned on artistically by a whole concept, I truly believe that this is what I keeps us going on and the reason why we do this job. I am from Paris where the weather is pretty bad 82% of the year and I am in love with outdoor locations and natural light so LA is like a paradise for me, each time I shoot at the beach with great models or in a big house with lots of natural lights or even pools I have a blast.

Perla, 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?

I am a french fashion photographer from Paris and I started photography in my early 20ies overseas and it was definitely the place to be although dealing with model agencies was difficult back then. I can say I was successful enough for 10 years to decide to move to California and get my 01 Visa then my Green Card so I can to move to LA thanks to my career, special sensitivity (french touch – my style is very feminine and sensual with kind of a very specific /unique sens of esthetic – you can tell I am from Europe in my images ) and assiduity. This city has so much to offer in terms of environment and natural light compared to Paris that I am very inspired to shoot here and feel blessed. The hardest part is dealing with clients who are cheap and refuse to pay the right price for our service knowing we need equipment, software that is not free and we spend lots of time, gas and energy on what we do. Not because we love what we do that we don’t have bills to pay like everyone else, especially in a city like LA. I am the most proud of keeping on going even in the hard times, to not give up, because being an artist is my core, I worked very hard to get there and I still do and a dip in the wave will not discourage me because I know fashion photography is the only thing that is meant for me.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I was very young and working at Sephora on the champs-Elysees in Paris to save some money to by my very first camera that I still happily use today believe it or not… I am so attached to it I know it by heart I call it “my baby camera” I don’t even want to change it for a more modern one, as long as it works I will keep it.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Sometimes there is no business inquiry for months, and you can feel like giving up because you are “unsuccessful” for too long, but the real success is to keep going no matter what.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.perlamaarek.com
• Instagram: @perlamaarek @perlamaarekphotography
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PerlaMaarek1/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perla-maarek-b053aa91/
• Other: https://onlyfans.com/perlamaarek

Image Credits
Hailey Carlson is a muse, Greyleen Eastwood (grand daughter of clint eastwood) Alise Willis Alexandra Lamas Lyudmila nesterova Abigail Zientek