Today we’d like to introduce you to Maria Kazikhanov.

Hi Maria, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?

The Art of Seeing: A Photographer’s Journey

The first photograph I ever truly cared about was not one I took, but one I saw. I was nineteen, working in a magazine office where the pages arrived in spreads, fresh from the hands of photographers across the world. There was one image—a woman, her face half-lit, half-lost in shadow. She was neither posing nor unguarded, caught in a moment that felt stolen. It unsettled me. It stayed with me.

For years, I worked behind the scenes, pulling together these images, sending them off to print, arranging flights and locations for photographers whose names carried weight. I was the one setting the stage, making decisions from afar, yet never pressing the shutter myself.

And then, one day, I did.

It was in Belgrade, on the set of a commercial. The lights were rigged, the scene set, but the young actor in front of me had frozen, his lines turning brittle in his mouth. I saw it in his hands, in the way his shoulders curled in on themselves. I had been in film long enough to recognize the moment before failure. So, I signaled to the cinematographer: roll now, let him think this is a rehearsal. And as soon as the weight of performance slipped from the boy’s shoulders, as soon as he thought no one was watching, he was perfect.

Later, when I looked at the footage, I realized—it wasn’t the directing I loved. It was the moment of recognition. Seeing something hidden and knowing how to bring it to light.

That was when I picked up the camera.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

I have spent a lifetime watching people—on set, at events, through the haze of a magazine’s final proofs. But the hardest thing about photography isn’t seeing. It’s convincing people to let you see them.

There are always challenges: the couple who says they want editorial portraits but resists anything that isn’t a conventional pose, the corporate client who wants creativity but fears the unfamiliar. And there’s the deeper, quieter struggle—the knowledge that the best images require trust, and trust cannot be rushed.

I have also struggled with pricing my work, with the unease of turning something I love into something I charge for. I have, more than once, delivered images as a gift instead of a service, because a part of me still believes that beauty should be given freely. But I am learning—learning that art and sustenance must coexist, that giving too much can empty you if you are not careful.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

I take portraits. I photograph weddings and events. For now, that is where my focus is—it is what allows me to keep working, to keep creating. My personal projects, the ones that pull at me late at night, are resting for now. But they are not gone. They are waiting, as all stories do, for their time to return.

I am not interested in the perfect dress, the carefully curated smiles. I am looking for the glance between a bride and her grandmother, the child tugging at his father’s sleeve, the moment someone forgets the camera is there. I do not use presets. I edit every image individually, because no two moments are the same.

What sets me apart is that I do not impose a style onto my subjects. I listen, I watch, and I let the story shape itself. A good portrait is not about how someone looks. It is about how they exist in that instant.

What matters most to you? Why?

Light.

Not just the kind that falls through windows at golden hour, but the light people carry within them.
One of my favorite writers, Orhan Pamuk, once wrote something that stayed with me: “Her insan bir alemdir.” Every person is a world unto themselves. I have carried this thought with me—not because it belongs to a place, but because it belongs to the work I do. To photography. To light. To seeing.

I think about the first time I photographed my own children—not as a mother snapping memories, but as a photographer, studying their expressions. There was my daughter, solemn but watchful, aware of the lens, and my son, unbothered, lost in his own joy. Two children, two completely different truths.

That is what matters most to me. That every person I photograph is allowed to be who they are. That my work does not flatten them into something they are not. That I continue to see them as they are, and that—through some trick of time, light, and luck—my camera catches it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.photoshurup.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photoshurup/

Image Credits

Maria Kazikhanov