LOVE STRUCK PART ONE
Founder and Creative Director of NALIN studios Anna Lindeman in conversation with creative couple Nikita Garrido and Hugo Lecrux.
Anna: Hi guys, first Iof all I want to thank you for the beautiful Images that you have created for us. You are the first couple that I interview for our LOVE STRUCK Series.
Can you tell me a bit about who you are and what you do?
Nikita: Hi Anna, I’m a designer of products, plastician and model. I come from a little village in the south of France near to Marseille but now i've been living in paris for about a year and a half.
Hugo: Im a French Photographer / director, from the outskirts of Paris. It must sound so naïve, but what I love is just making beautiful images and telling stories. I use almost exclusively analog cameras, even though I believe anything can make a stunning picture, weather it’s an old VHS camera, a digital scanner or a 3000€ Leica. Other than that, being from Portugal I love the south, the sun, and everything that goes with it. I also like old Mercedes and young Corgis.
What brought you two together?
Nikita: He took me to eat a pastry during our first date and i fell under the spell
Hugo: Our common love for cinema, animals, the south, the sun.
What do you Love the most about each other?
Nikita: Hugo is a very caring and attentive person. He enjoys helping others and gives a lot of love to everyone around him. He is very smart, very talented, very selfless. Hugo also helps me a lot when I try to create new objects, he has very good advices with a lot of taste. I love him madly.
Hugo: I love how she is genuinely the kindest person I’ve ever met and how she became an incredible and strong woman. She went thought so many hardships that would just break someone’s soul, and instead she just got better and nicer all along the way. And her love for people and animals. She has the purest soul I’ve ever encountered, she makes me laugh every single day and she can twerk like hell.
Can you tell a bit about how it is to work together?
Nikita: I really like Hugo's work s and I love work with him, my favorite photos of me are the ones he took. Even if sometimes he is impatient with me I know it is also because I disperse very easily haha.
Hugo: Usually it’s just fun, but sometimes it’s not that easy. When I work and something is important to me, it highlights some of my flaws like being impatient. I’m working on it and its getting better everytime.
What inspires you the most about each other?
Nikita: Sometimes I would like to be like him because I find him positive and sure of himself. He's a man who understands the situation of women and their struggles so I think being by his side makes me stronger in this crazy world.
Hugo: That thing her upper lip does sometimes when she smiles. And also when we travel together, its just so inspiring to discover new places with her and watch her be amazed
What inspires you in your work?
Nikita: In design, I use geometric shapes a lot, which allows me to keep this simplicity and this logic throughout my creation process, to keep a certain harmony without going all over the place.
I am inspired by what surrounds me, it can be a color association on an outfit that I see in the street, by a photo on instagram or by the archictecture. I love the work of Ricardo Bofill for example.
Hugo: So many stuff, some more shallow and some more deep. It goes from simple aesthetics like the color pink to serious stuff like the fight against patriarchy
The new year just started, do you want to share any of your intentions/ dreams/ plans for the new year?
Nikita: A move, a dog and lots of new projects. I will soon release a collection of ceramics that can already be seen on my instagram. My "Concreto totem" lamp will evolve and take on a new aspect.
Then in the future I would like to create a line of objects related to food, cooking is one of my great passion.
I can't wait to go to Portugal with Hugo and make a kind of small residence to be able to paint, create, do lots of things!
Hugo: We’re moving together in a new place, and we’re getting a Corgi as soon as we’re settled. So that’s pretty much exiting. Also I’m looking forward to the end of the global pandemic so I can spend at least a month in Portugal. I miss the sea. I miss the sun. I miss my vovo (grandma in Portuguese) . Finally, I want to be able to take my personal work more seriously, keep working on my next photo series, and make a lot of videos!
Who is your muse or someone who inspires you in your work?
Nikita: I would say the sun hahaha. I feel very creative when I'm in a sunny place, the light plays a lot on my mood. When I create a new object, I immediately imagine setting it up close to water, in the sand or in a rather arid nature. Which necessarily brings me back to the south and therefore to the sun.
Hugo: My Instagram feed is basically trying really hard to post anything else than pictures of Nikita all the time. Its so easy to take pictures of the person that you find the most beautiful in the world, on the outstide and the inside. 
Can you tell a bit about the story that you have created for us?
Hugo: Its about using different formats at the same time, a kind of mise en abyme, finding different ways to take selfies. Me being a photographer and Nikita being a model, its always interesting to look for new approaches when It comes to capturing images of ourselves.
What message do you want to share with us in order to make this world a better place?
Nikita: Be more benevolent with all around us, people, the planet... and be patient because of the « connard de virus »
Hugo: Love each other and fight the power.
Anna: Thank you so much for your time and your inspiration. I wish you lot's of Love🌹
Find more of Nikita's work here
Find more of Hugo's work here
