We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Blenis & Elias Pittman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah and Elias below.

Sarah and Elias, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

While almost every project taken on with other people has some sort of meaning for us the most meaningful project we have worked on so far is the on going series we have been working on together called ‘grow with me”. It is a series of photos taken of body parts that are intertwined but also are not intertwined at some points, it hints at the idea of ‘letting go’ in relationships. The idea behind it being that relationships have an ebb and flow, seasons of flowering and dying back. We are intertwined but we are separate. We are hoping to make a book out of this series at some point in our lives.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are Sarah Blenis and Elias Pittman, a married photography duo currently under the moniker ‘Kosmorama”. Kosmorama is a photography term but we spelled it with a K instead of a C (an ode to to Eli’s childhood pet ‘Kosmo’.) We shoot film on small and medium format, we also develop and scan our own film mainly. While we have never definitively put ourselves in one box of photography, we lean more towards shooting portraits, and conceptual photography. We started this journey with a shared love of film photography and a vintage camera that was a birthday present, while simultaneously falling in love with the process that film photography entails. We both have our own roles within it, and switch out those roles from time to time. We started by taking photos of our close friends, and honestly it has gone farther than either of us could have imagined. We released it into the world and have been extremely surprised by the response. We are proud of how far we have gone with it, and how much it has grown in the last couple of years. One of our goals within this has always been working with the arts community, we want artists in the community to be able to afford having their photos taken. Artists do a lot themselves, Eli has been in various bands for the last twenty years and knows first hand how that goes. We think what sets us apart from others is our dedication to a shared vision with other people as well as capturing things in ways that make you look at an image more than once. One of the most beautiful things in the world to us can be taking another persons vision and bringing it to life with them. We have said in a lot of our statements about what we are doing that we are a collaboration, with each other, with other humans, and with the environment. We are inspired by the natural world and its elements and our mission is to capture essence, things previously unseen, and emotion.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Elias: Anything can be an art. I think if a creative ecosystem wants to truly thrive there has to be a high level of acceptance and open-mindedness about the ideas surrounding what makes art, art.

Sarah: Agreed, and also more nurturing spaces for art to reside in would be helpful. More funding (haha) most definitely but yes, acceptance and nurturing spaces.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being creative?

Sarah: I think the most rewarding part about being an artist is the process itself. Being in the present moment and creating, losing yourself in that. It’s also cool to meet new people, make connections and have experiences with other humans within your art.

Elias: Creating for me is the best form of ‘doing’. It can almost feel like a puzzle that I get to solve but ultimately it’s about the moment of creating, and being in the moment that lights me up. That’s what I find myself feeling when looking at a finished piece, the experiences I had while creating the piece.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kosmoramaphoto.com
• Instagram: @kosmorama_