Life & Work with Patil Khakhamian

Today we’d like to introduce you to Patil Khakhamian.

Hi Patil, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I would say my story as an artist started when I left my home country for the first time at age sixteen to go study and live abroad. At boarding school, I got immersed into the world of visual arts where I would lose myself for hours in the studio, painting landscapes of my environment, portraits of my friends and spending a lot of time in the darkroom developing my freshly exposed films.

Growing up, even though I come from a family of artists, society fed me the sob story of the starving artist. I didn’t know being an artist could be a feasible career option for me to explore. For the first time at boarding school, I had the freedom to choose my subjects and I couldn’t bear the idea of being stuck in a chemistry lab all day while I watched the visual art students paint and sculpt for hours in the art studio. It took me a month but I finally made the switch from chemistry to visual arts, and this is when I would say my story really starts.

As a cinematographer who started as a painter, one of my biggest inspirations is Edward Hopper. His paintings show a delicate dance between light, composition and color. My early days as an artist, I would sit in the studio for hours watching the sun change its location and how that affected everything it touched, to how the night lights replacing the sun would completely change the mood of the landscape and I would pick up my oil paints and brushes and forget time. Back then, I didn’t even know what cinematography was, but I was still studying the effects of light on surfaces.

After boarding school, I moved to Brazil to take a gap year before I committed to four years of college in Colorado. This is when I fell in love with the art of visual storytelling. With my first ever DSLR camera, I went around the island experimenting on the intimidating “manual” mode of my camera until I finally started to grasp the “ISO-Aperture-Shutter Speed” beginner nightmare.

I was in a new country, culture, language, colors, and even the sun felt different. After a month of self-taught photography, I had the idea of putting together a photo-journalistic exhibition at a local gallery with portraits of locals accompanied by stories from their lives worth sharing. The exhibition proved to be such a success, bringing together people from so many different contexts that would otherwise have never met each other. It opened up so many raw emotions in the crowd, curiosity, laughter and even tears. I knew then I wanted my future career to be storytelling through art.

Living in more than five countries with such different cultures at this point directly affected my choice of education. I wanted to keep exploring cultures while I grew myself as an artist who was able to utilize the skills able to make academic knowledge accessible. This is why I chose to combine the two majors, anthropology and film and media studies. I fell in love with documentary films and photography and I constantly chose to express myself through these media. I won a documentary grant and was able to share with the world my story as an Armenian diaspora growing up in Lebanon. I realized then that my story matters and that people are genuinely interested, and so does yours!

I did a specialized training in Prague that allowed me to learn the ins and outs of cinematography and I came back to Colorado with a fresh perspective. I knew after graduation I wanted to move to Los Angeles to explore my passion as a cinematographer even further. So now I’m here working on music videos, short films, commercials, and anything that requires storytelling through camera and lights really.

It gives me a sense of fulfillment when I see how a team of talented people can come together and make magic happen. So much happens behind the scenes to get the final product invisible to the public viewing the film. The process is what drives my passion, the final product is a beautiful and direct result of the process. And similarly, even though most people wouldn’t necessarily see my process of how I started to where I am today, it is definitely what shaped me to be the person and artist I am today and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There are so many challenges to being an artist, let alone a woman from abroad trying to find her way within the film industry in one of the most competitive cities in the world. The struggle to prove your worth in a city full of so many talented people is quite draining, but it all comes down to who stays consistent in the end. There’s always room for growth as an artist, no matter how far on the road you are.

One of the biggest struggles I have faced as an artist is having to believe myself and trust the process. It takes time to make something good and the skills don’t come overnight. When I’m doubting myself, I have to be kind and constantly remind myself not to compare my journey to others.

Another struggle is getting over the competitive mindset. Someone else’s success does not mean your own failure, we should help each other grow rather than bring each other down.

I would say my biggest struggle at the moment is being an artist who moved to the USA by herself on a non-immigrant visa. The amount of work I have to put is doubled by the fact that I have a time limit in which I want to achieve my goals. I have to work five times harder because of my position as a non-immigrant woman straight out of college without any family here. Not having that safety net to fall back to is really tough on those difficult days filled with uncertainty, but all I can do is stay true to myself, keep my passion alive and hope to inspire other artists to keep pushing.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a cinematographer/videographer and a photographer.

I currently work on music videos, short films, commercials, interviews and events. And I’ve been recently getting into shooting weddings!

My work is all about bringing aesthetics and storytelling together. As a cinematographer, my goal is to make sure everything is lit intentionally to emphasize the mood of the film. I like working with bold colors such as red, purple and green and I prefer soft diffused lights over harsher looks, although, everything with purpose has its own special place.

As a photographer, I love the vintage look of film, so you will catch me shooting on my Fujifilm everywhere I go; I always carry it in my bag! I have seven years of experience in photography and my favorite way of shooting is documentary photography, unposed, candid, raw moments caught infinitely in time. I like to interchange my knowledge in photography and cinematography to push my work further.

One of the very first music performance videos I shot in LA got featured on Grammy’s website so that is one thing I am very proud of. It always gives me a greater sense of drive to see the talents in front of the camera enjoy the process and the end product.

I would say what sets me apart from others is how I like to combine my different passions and life experiences in my artistic expression. I have lived in Lebanon, Armenia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, South Africa and Colorado and have traveled to many more, all of which give me endless inspiration and influence in my works. I have developed a unique eye that sees things from a different perspective which lets me produce interesting images and concepts.

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I love how there’s so much diversity here! You can drive 30min away and find yourself within an Armenian neighborhood in Glendale, then drive a little more and get to have some of the best Ethiopian food in little Ethiopia.

Any type of activity you want to do, you can find a group of active passionate people who pursue it. There are endless networking events, exhibitions, gatherings, and you can even initiate them yourself! I love how I can connect with other talented artists and collaborate with them on different projects. I also love the weather here, it’s one of the primary factors to why I chose to move here in the first place.

Because of the huge Armenian presence, LA feels like a home away from home in a way. I can hear people speak my mother tongue on the streets and see Armenian and Middle Eastern shops, where they actually have ingredients I can cook traditional Lebanese and Armenian food with.

One thing I don’t like though is how car-oriented the city is and how this creates a lot of traffic, and the city is so spread out that you are absolutely reliant on a car. It’s also one of the most expensive cities to live in, it doesn’t help that one grocery run with a bag half full would cost you more than what you can spend in a month elsewhere.

There’s all sorts of places, people and activities, you just have to find the right fit for you, which is good because there’s a lot of options here.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://patilkhakhamian.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patil_kha/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patiil.khakhamiian/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patilkhakhamian/