Mima's penchant for photography was born of a father with a paparazzi-like Polaroid 'instant film' obsession. Fascinated by the magical process of seeing a face come alive in the palm of her hand and later developing prints in a cramped and freezing dark room for an Art class credit, a lasting passion for capturing time fragments for posterity took hold.

Without expert guidance, from the age of 14 countless cameras passed through Mima's hands and for a long while the experimentation exercise produced disastrous results. After university and whilst in her first corporate job working for the Australian conglomerate Bond Corp., a gift of an Olympus OM-1n by a commercial photographer hired by the company got her pondering the art as a marketable craft. Evidently, it was her overbearing and eager interest in his kit bag that motivated the gesture but that moment also reset her career trajectory for what is bearing fruits decades later.

Segwaying from a staunchly corporate reality to the creative worlds of fashion, advertising and film production (both behind the scenes and in front of the lens), over a span of 30 years Mima's work life alongside pick-of-the-crop filmmakers and directors of photography added invaluably to her quiet process of autodidacticism. When not working on a moving pictures project, taking photographs eventually became the primary extracurricular activity of choice.

Today, photography has positioned itself as the natural fit both as a form of personal, creative expression and as a professional outlet. Behind the viewfinder and in that magical instance when the shutter steals the most fleeting of moments, Mima finds the most truthful connection to the physical world and the people around her.

Mima Casanova

Work