Pola Pavlac
Avant-Garde Portraiture & High-End Retouching.

I don’t just take photographs. I build them.
Every image starts as an idea: a mood, a character, sometimes just a texture or a way light could bend.

The camera only captures the first draft.

My background is in visual design, and it shows in how I work -every session is planned like a small production, down to the materials and the light. But the photo itself is just the raw material. The image only becomes what I actually wanted in retouching, frame by frame.

My conceptual and editorial work has been published in several magazines, you can see the tearsheets in Publications.

If you’re looking for a portrait of your own, something closer to art than a snapshot, this is the kind of work I make. And if you’re a photographer or retoucher curious about how these images come together, I break down my lighting and retouching process on social media.