Photographer Greg Lotus’ work can be found regularly in the pages of Italian Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, L’Uomo Vogue, and W magazine.
Lotus has shot advertising campaigns for Escada, L’Oreal, Swarovski, Cartier, aside from his editorial work for major American and European publications, Levi’s, Neiman Marcus, and Van Cleef & Arpels.
After his most recent showing at Art Basel in Miami Beach, Florida, Lotus has put together a culmination of limited edition, certified, and signed art prints available for purchase.
Greg Lotus sat down with AZFoothills Magazine to give some insight into this once-in-a-lifetime collection of iconic fashion photography.
Can you please give us a little background on yourself and your career for our readers?
I grew up in West Virginia on a farm, and when I was 18, I got scouted in New York to become a model. That didn’t really pan out because I just wasn’t that into it, but I started to pick up a camera and took photos of my friends.
– Greg Lotus
Once I started taking their photos, their agents would call and ask me to start shooting other models. It really just blew up from there.
– Greg Lotus
Lotus then traveled to Miami during the ’90s and early 2000’s when the city became an epi-center for photography, art, and fashion. In 2002, when Miami Beach started hosting Art Basel, the city suddenly became an international center for art.
Now let’s shift to the present, can you tell us about your more recent Art Basel 2020 collection?
Well, it’s a culmination of over 22 years now shooting, it’s been a while, but these photos, in particular, are all from editorials in magazines.
– Greg Lotus
Drawing inspiration from classical paintings and a wide array of sources and life experiences, Lotus reinterprets in his own evocative way the use of light and shadow, playing with angles and composition to enhance the graphic quality of his images.
The thing I love most about fashion photography is the challenge. I would get a call from the late-Franca Sozzani of Vogue Italia, and she would want a spa shoot. The phone would then hang up. It left me to become a creative director and create cinematic stories from these photoshoots.
– Greg Lotus
Nature is a recurrent motif in his photography, a clear echo of his childhood. Lotus often mixes high fashion with rural or wild surroundings and includes exotic animals in his compositions, using elements that link the rarefied atmosphere of the fashion industry to the organic beauty of the natural world.
I love a natural background, whether it’d be a forest, desert, or where-ever and combining it with fashion. I just really enjoy merging the models with these environments and creating stories from them.
– Greg Lotus
Can you tell us about a personal favorite of ours “Lilly” and “Turquoise Lilly”?
Well, “Lilly” is an image of Lily Cole, an English model, actress, and entrepreneur. Both of these images were created by accident. I was going through a bunch of films one day, and my computer started to die on me.
– Greg Lotus
As my computer was dying, it just started doing all these weird things to the image and the color. I didn’t really plan on it, but I took some screenshots and was like well that’s interesting…
– Greg Lotus
One last question, what do you see is the future of art and fashion photography amid COVID-19? From your perspective.
Well, I probably didn’t start showing my pieces until about five years ago. I had this massive archive of well over 1-million photos, it was a lot!
When COVID-19 hit, I said there has to be an outlet for all this, you know?
– Greg Lotus
Lotus then started to reach out to interior designers, design firms, galleries, and art curators to host his photography collection. His gallery sales have increased since COVID-19 because people are now shifting their attention to their homes.
The positive is that people are confined to their homes, and they’re using that time to revamp their living spaces. People are now restricted indoors by the coronavirus and turning their areas into their sanctuaries.
The art community is just having to find new outlets and techniques to get individuals to view their galleries and collections.
– Greg Lotus
For more information on Greg Lotus and to purchase his limited edition art prints, visit: http://www.greglotus.com/
Follow @Greglotusfoto on Instagram
