Izabella

Tell me exactly what this room smelled like to you – oil, incense, candles? Cigarettes?

Like gasoline in your nose and a scented candle. And the way the strangers' bodies smelled. That was the most terrifying part for me… the rest was rather pleasant.

There was the taste of fresh fruit, the smell of the sea, Mother Nature, which is destructive in itself. My heroine... capable of giving so much of herself, giving birth.

The human body is funny: strange dicks, weird shapes, ass hair, discharge. We prefer to believe in the tidy image we see on the packaging of a dildo, or a ‘sexy’ underwear that squeezes us when we put it on. The opposites of what I was surrounded by: rawness and difficulties of the relationships, dependencies, emotions.

Where was it, and how did you get there?

Does it matter? Would you go for it if I told you…? I left my life behind for that month, as one thought constantly haunted me: what is reality? A construct created for the exchange of goods… instincts, or a nature we no longer notice. Two stages of life revealed itself to me. As children, connected to our own bodies: we are natural in them, in love with our belly, and like to be fed. This is the stage of bodily unconsciousness that unfortunately fades as we grow up. In contrast, I experienced a corporeality based on exchange, pleasure, work, a way „to achieve something." And all around us, untamed nature… and we, just lost in it all.

My photographic documentary project, “Izabella”, grew organically out of a personal journey I took to Australia. What originally began as a straightforward trip to visit an old friend, quickly transformed into a deep immersion into her dual existence. Through my lens, I watched Izabella constantly navigate a complex balancing act, weighing the tender, relentless demands of motherhood and personal relationships against her daily reality and labor as an erotic masseuse.

In capturing her world, I wanted to document the raw tension between intimate domesticity and commercialized intimacy, honoring the resilience of a woman existing within both spaces at once.

Zdulsky took part in our Face-to-Face educational feedback program with our Assistant Editor Carolina Semprucci during Les Rencontres d’Arles 2026.