Check Out Tessa Nesis’ Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tessa Nesis.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I graduated from USC with a major in East Asian Languages and Cultures (emphasis in Korean) and a minor in Dance in Entertainment in December 2019. During my time there, my curiosity took me throughout Europe, where I embarked on a solo backpacking trip and participated in a dance intensive in Italy; Asia, where I backpacked throughout Japan and Thailand and studied abroad in Korea; and Israel, investigating the Gaga movement language at its source in Tel Aviv.

With plans to pursue contemporary dance post grad, I freelanced and was featured in short films, music videos, live performances and collaborative projects. Before settling into LA for work, I freewheeled my way to Mexico City for some adventure. Backpacking through the urban jungle with a Nikon L35AF point and shoot camera, I explored a newfound hobby: film photography. After experiencing the thrill of opening 108 tiff files, i.e. 3 weeks in 3 rolls, I was sold into the physical world of experimentation. In July, I began shooting my friends on a newly gifted Nikon Fg and quickly fell into a creative groove. Inspired by the visual medium and its agency as a form of digital social interaction, the world of Star Cinnabar (@starcinnabar) came into inception. Since then, I’ve been building my portfolio, photographing friends and strangers I’ve met online, with the aspiration of shooting professionally. My work was recently featured on Reckless Magazine for a weekend Instagram takeover; I’m grateful to continue sharing my photos!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
As I’m relatively new to film photography, I’m constantly practicing new techniques and styles. The factors I grapple with are maintaining consistency in quality and revealing the subject’s truest expression. Those factors are collaborative efforts and can be achieved by the generation of positive energy. By creating art with someone, we feed off of each other’s ideas to conceptualize and create quality content and operate from a state of openness, establishing a safe space to fully express our authentic selves.

A struggle across all mediums (past and present) has been maintaining motivation and inspiration. This is where the active consumption of media: books, movies, music and spiritual work: yoga, meditation, travel comes into play. Absorbing artistic works to draw from is a vast sea of inspiration and cleaning the mental slate generates motivation.

What else should we know?
I’d love to give you more insight on my film photography realm, Star Cinnabar. Stars are the windows of the universe in a blue lit sky and cinnabar is a red sulphide of mercury, an alchemical operation symbolically achieving rebirth. The polarity between star: blue, celestial and cinnabar: red, chthonic suggests a dual nature of warm and cool tones and of the heavens and the underworld. In the Tarot, the 17th arcanum, the Star is a symbol of creation, birth and transformation that encourages harmonizing with the rhythm of the cosmos. Ergo, Star Cinnabar is a portal into otherworldly vibrance, a consciousness that galvanizes a chromatic schema of life.

The chromatic approach is a reflection of zest, living with a sense of excitement and anticipation. I live for the moments when I create from a seemingly outsourced energy, a reassuring hand guiding a circular flow. Transcending the ego and the psyche and creating from a deep-seated intuition is what I strive for. Those moments remind me of the collective unity we operate in, or can at least choose to when we detract from fear.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
A potent source of inspiration for me has been filmmaker and author Alejandro Jodorowsky. His 1970s avant-garde films, The Holy Mountain and El Topo are psychedelic worlds to live in. Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy is a fascinating read on the power of creativity as achieved in dreams, theater, poetry, shamanism.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: instagram.com/tnesis (personal); instagram.com/starcinnabar (photo account)

Image Credits
Ernesto Huerta Juarez (personal) Tessa Nesis (additional)