Zosia Promińska, born in 1985 in Poznań and currently based between Zurich and Portugal, is a visual artist working in the medium of photography. After a sixteen-year career as an international fashion model, she moved to the other side of the lens, using her experience as the foundation for her current artistic explorations – including her major project Future Perfect, the second chapter of which she shares with Contemporary Lynx in an exclusive sneak peek.
Promińska started modelling at the age of fifteen. Just a year later, she moved to Paris and worked all around the world with major fashion brands, such as Marc Jacobs, Fendi, Vivienne Westwood, and Giorgio Armani, and for magazines like Vogue, Elle, and Vanity Fair. Even as a model, Promińska was particularly interested in the creative aspect of her profession – the possibility of co-creating the pictures. Working so closely with renowned photographers helped her to learn the craft. Now, trained in ethnolinguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University, “she brings an anthropological sensibility to her images, marked by an awareness of language, culture, and human connection”, as described by Jil Welbers.
Capturing Vulnerability
Currently, instead of being the subject of the pictures, Promińska creates them. Working primarily in the field of fashion photography, she considers her experience with modelling an asset, enabling her to understand and direct her models better and to engage with them in a compassionate way. Her works have been published in major fashion magazines such as Vogue, i-D, Harper’s Bazaar, and L’Officiel. “Promińska approaches photography with a structured and perceptive eye while leaving space for what she calls ‘accidents’– the unplanned moments that let an image come to life.
“Her portraits capture vulnerability, gestures, and expressions that suggest untold stories. Moving fluidly between personal and commissioned projects, she allows each to inform the other, carrying the narrative depth of her art into her commercial work and the immediacy of assignments back into her explorations” (Jil Welbers). Promińska’s personal experience as a teenage girl finding herself in the adult and harsh world of fashion, presenting herself in luxurious attire for the cameras while living in the poorest part of the city, was also an inspiration behind her biggest (so far) art project. The series Future Perfect includes over one hundred portraits of teenage models-to-be. While the major fashion shows require their models to be of age, many agencies recruit prepubescents while they are still too young to fully participate in the modelling industry. All of the sitters in the Future Perfect are in this liminal position – teenagers aged from twelve to seventeen, who have already signed contracts with modelling agencies but still have to wait for their chance in the fashion industry.
Captured in attire by major Polish designers, they don’t seem to fit into the intimate space of their own rooms. The luxurious, high-fashion clothing stands out against the old-fashioned interiors; polished make-up and hairstyling clash with the messy surroundings; while adult, confident poses contrast with traces of a not-so-long-ago childhood that the rooms still bear, such as plushies, backpacks, drawings, and religious pictures seen in the backdrop. Beds are often central objects in the rooms, underlining the surreal and dreamlike nature of the situation. Small, private spaces hold great fantasies – not only of luxurious life, but also of travelling, and of escaping the limiting surroundings of their hometowns for a wider world full of open possibilities.
Liminal Spaces and Dreamlike Realities
The project was created from the start with the intention of its longevity. For Contemporary Lynx, Promińska shares the sneak peek of its continuation that she’s currently working on. After seven years, the artist revisits the teenagers who participated in the first part of Future Perfect to capture them again in the new series of photographs. The project began with portraits of preadolescent models in their private spaces, surrounded by details that reflected both their innocence and their ambitions.
In its continuation, the work follows these same individuals as they grow up, tracing how both their changing bodies and maturing minds influence their paths. Sometimes, physical transformations close the door to the fashion world; other times, it is their own evolving perspectives that lead them toward new directions, not necessarily tied to modelling. By juxtaposing these shifts, the project highlights the complexity of their journeys and the many ways early dreams may be reshaped.
Promińska’s debut book of the same name was published by Kehrer in 2021. Her work has been recognised with the Krakow Photomonth ShowOff award, nominated for ReGeneration5 at Musée de l’Elysée, and shortlisted as a finalist for the vfg-Nachwuchspreis; it has also been exhibited in solo shows at Instytut Fotografii Fort in Poland and Images Vevey in Switzerland.
