Martina Tesanovic: Mortality

Human Thoughts About Mortality is a quiet storm of a series, a meditation staged in the liminal spaces where grief, beauty and introspection converge. Photographer Martina Tesanovic crafts each frame as if it were a memory resurfacing from the earth itself, using the fading light of a cemetery to create a world suspended between the living and the lost. The result is atmospheric, unsettling and profoundly human.

Model Artem Trubnikov moves through the space with an almost spectral grace, his bare feet and elongated gestures suggesting a soul caught mid transition. His presence is not that of a performer but of a witness, someone navigating a landscape that holds both the weight of history and the inevitability of silence. Trubnikov’s performance grounds the series emotionally, giving the viewer a point of empathy within the darkness.

Fashion designer Paulina Bongartz drapes the body in layered black fabrics that swallow and reshape the silhouette. Her garments function as both protection and burden, echoing mourning attire while refusing to be literal. The sweeping cloak, the cut out sleeves, the hand stitched constellation on the back of a coat all point towards a narrative of searching. These clothes seem made for wandering between worlds.

Together, the trio build a vision that rejects the theatrical clichés of death and instead embraces the quiet, personal nature of contemplating mortality. Tesanovic’s use of shadow celebrates what cannot be illuminated, while Bongartz’s garments become vessels for thought. Trubnikov completes the circle, embodying a figure who thinks with his whole body.

This series is a reminder that mortality is not a spectacle but a private reckoning. In Human Thoughts About Mortality, the act of looking becomes an act of listening.

Credits

Photographer: Martina Tesanovic

http://www.instagram.com/martina.tesanovic

Model: Artem Trubnikov

http://www.instagram.com/aivars.raider

Fashion Designer: Paulina Bongartz

http://www.instagram.com/paulina.bgtz