MY STORY
Vincent Six
I started photographing 15 years ago while I was living in London. A friend of mine asked me if I could take some photos of him with my shiny new camera... but he wanted them nude (!). It was the first time I was photographing someone without clothes. I confess I was a bit nervous at first but after many years photographing random things I wanted to try something new.
The photoshoot went amazingly well. I think it helped me that I always had a very relaxed and open attitude about nudity. Soon after that, there was a rumour in my group of friends that I was very good at taking nude pics (lol) . I never imagined that would be the beginning of my career.
FILMS & NATURE
I always wanted to be a film director. I loved to create stories, the use of special effects, the emotion of the narrative, the filmic look...
For years I was photographing naked guys non-stop but I felt it was lacking a purpose. It helped me to practice my technique, of course, but those images, at the end of the day, were only shared with the models and I wanted something more. I wanted to share them with the World but I wanted to tell something with them. To build a narrative.
I thought of creating a magazine for a long time, but I wasn't very interested in the editorial and graphic design part. I loved to photograph and I was struggling to find the right way to share my images. Putting them online was a "no-no", I feared that would strip them from their artistic intention and also I had a lot of privacy concerns.
That's when I started thinking about creating a book... But it seemed like and impossible task to achieve.
Do something that scares you, every day.
Vincent Six, Photographer
YOU, ME, THE WOODS
My first book
In 2016, my first book, YOU, ME, THE WOODS was available in the bookstores of UK and Spain. A book that combined photography and narrative, like a short-film you could enjoy in a printed format but more focused on images. That was the result of all my struggles.
At first, I had no idea how to find a publishing company so I decided to create one: VINCENT VI (now I changed it to VINCENT SIX to make it easier to understand). That would serve me for future books and I also dreamed of publishing other artists too, as happened with Ego Rodriguez and Hajime Yamamoto first books.
I photographed this book in a forest in France, it was my first professional photographic work and it took me two days of shooting and 6 months of editing. The book tells the story of two guys who save their relationship with the words they find in the silence of the woods, and reignite their spark again.
The book sold out quickly and it had an exhibition at the Bricklane Gallery in London the same year.
In 2020 I decided to make it available again and I will publish in Autumn an extended edition with more images and and a "making of" in digital format.
NEXT CHALLENGE. A HARD COVER BOOK
FIREWOOD
My first book grabbed so much attention that a lot of people contacted me to model for my next book. I couldn't say no. I loved photographing!
I found myself shooting almost every weekend during 1 year and suddenly I found out that I have more photos than I could handle for another narrative project. There were just too many! It was impossible to connect all of them in a single story like the previous book... But then I found out that actually all of them shared a common feeling. A sense of discovery for new things and my love for nature.
VINCENT 1: FIREWOOD was born as a part of a 6 book series about Men & Nature. My plan is to complete this collection over the next years with the fund and support of my followers. It took me more than two years to complete the first volume. It was truly a titanic task for me as I was doing everything myself, the photos, the editing and all the business related things: from dealing with providers to packing and shipping the books myself.
The first edition of the book had a manufacturing issue that delayed the release 5 months till the printing company was able to fix it. I thought of quitting photography entirely. That drained my energy daily but I fought it and finally I got my copies printed right. The book shipped to 25 different countries and I receive the best feedback one could imagine. This was an incredible experience for me and my first global project were I made lots of new friends and met other fellow photographers around the World. The book sold out in just a few months and now I'm working to bring more copies into the market while I work on my next TWO books.
PACIFIC SPIRIT
In 2018, I moved to Canada looking for new challenges and landscapes. One month after arriving I started photographing for the successor of my book"FIREWOOD".
As soon as I arrived to Canada, I was blown away by the landscapes and grown old nature. The trees were the highest I've ever seen in my life and you could find places were no one has trodden in hundreds of years. It was a truly mystical feeling imagining old cultures living in those forests and mountains not that long ago. That's when I decided that my next book, titled "PACIFIC SPIRIT", would be inspired by those men; by primal cultures, first men and imaginary legends surrounding those old environments. The book is scheduled to release in January 2023 and May 2023
While photographing "PACIFIC SPIRIT" I travelled to remote places and the wildest places I've been in my life. Some of them with strenuous hikes, requiring to snow shoe hours or hiking back in the dark of the forest. In every shoot, there was a moment where I exclaimed: - Wow, look how beautiful is that landscape, it doesn't look real.
My goal was to make book that would show the strength of nature over four seasons while picturing the bravest men that could inspire others to be more confident about themselves.