CHECK Magazin - Gesundheitsmagazin für Männer No.9

ENGLISH
Body Awareness
TRAPPED IN
A DREAM
Sound familiar to you? You see a photo
of yourself and suddenly you‘re surprised
that you look quite good. But then you
look in the mirror and don’t find this
attractive person again. The problem of
impaired perception of one‘s body and
appearance is widespread, especially
among gay men. One who often
witnesses this is photographer Kiko
Dionisio.
Hello Kiko, you photograph many people from
our community and have noticed that there
is often a discrepancy between how your
models perceive themselves and how you
perceive them.
I first noticed it when I was photographing a
friend of mine, a very beautiful man who was
exercising every day. I‘ve always wondered
why he does all this and he told me he was
always overweight as a kid and was bullied
accordingly as ‘the little fat boy’. He still saw
that boy in the mirror and not the well-built
man he was now. I found that very surprising
because he was the last person I thought
would have problems with his appearance.
How often does it happen to you that your
models don‘t feel comfortable in their skins
at first?
Well, I usually had to persuade them to do
it at all. I usually hear: no, I‘m not ready yet,
give me another six months, I don‘t look good
enough yet. Even though they already looked
like Adonis. And then when we start taking
pictures, it always takes about an hour before
they can let go.
“99 % of the time the models are
amazed at how good they look.”
I have to say that I work a lot with shadows
and therefore stage a lot. So I often say: please
stand more to the left or right, or please tilt
your head a little now. The models therefore
do not necessarily have the feeling that they
know what is happening. In order to convey a
feeling of security, I show the pictures directly
afterwards. 99 % of the time the models are
totally amazed at how good they look.
Why is that?
For some it may be that they are chasing an
ideal that they want to live up to. Anything
that doesn‘t match that isn‘t considered
pretty. Be it an idea of ​yourself that you don‘t
want to look like you did back then, or the role
model of a great singer or actor that you want
to be like. Behind this is usually the idea of ​
wanting to look perfect.
FOTO: KIKO DIONISIO
22 CHECK BERLIN #9