O art-Studio – Of Art and Fashion

Adel Essam (Instagram) and Henar Sherif (Instagram) are the duo behind O art-Studio, a creative house where the lines between fashion, art and history merge and blur to create unique, stunning results.

How did your individual journeys as photographers and art directors lead to the formation of O art-Studio ?

Henar: I studied interior design at the faculty of Fine Arts and was working as a teaching assistant there at the time we met.

Adel: I was still in college and studying communication engineering then.

This was over 10 years ago, we used to walk the streets of our hometown, Alexandria, Egypt and use our phones to take photos of beautiful scenes we came across as a group of friends. We thought if we combined our passion and creative minds together we would create something big, and right then we decided to work together and create “O art-Studio”, our media production house. 

In what ways do you both contribute different stylistic approaches to your projects?

Henar: We believe that our visions complete one another in that aspect, for example, when we are working on a new project, we brainstorm either together or individually then each one of us presents their vision on how to best approach this project. Sometimes the concepts we present are alike, so we start working on combining both our ideas and come up with a final structure. Sometimes they’re very different, so we discuss and study both scenarios together till we agree which would work better, then we both work on it together. 

What draws you to the intersection of art and fashion, and how do you incorporate artistic elements into your commercial projects?

Adel: We consider our work as if we’re painting, there’s a blank canvas and the product we’re shooting is an element in this painting, it completes it and without it something would be missing, it has to be the hero yes, but it wouldn’t be without the whole vision and elements around it that support it to be and make it standout.

Talk to us about the Dior show you shot at the Pyramids of Giza. Has the experience shaped your artistic growth and direction?

Adel: We saw a totally new aspect of working under pressure and having to make everything work perfectly no matter the circumstances and we did enjoy it! We didn’t have a chance to scout the location or prep and test until only one day before the actual shoot, when the location was built, so we were kind of prepping for the whole thing theoretically. On the shooting day, 80% of the plan changed just 10 minutes before shooting due to circumstances related to the preparations for the show and we just had to quickly adapt, just think and act on the spot while making sure that the outcome would still turn out impeccable, and thankfully it did and it worked perfectly. 

Bridging the past and present seems to be important in your work. What about the past inspires your work?

Henar: Classical art is a HUGE inspiration for us, it carries a history of real stories, mythologies, fantasy, imagination, human history and discoveries.

If you could shoot a project anywhere in the world without limitation, where would it be and why?

Henar: Probably in outer space, maybe on the moon or a planet, how cool would that be?! 

Why?: Because we’d make history then.