Julia is from St. Petersburg, Russia, but currently lives in Antalya, Turkey. She is multilingual and speaks Russian, Bulgarian, English, and recently started learning German.
She speaks softly, a little shy to be in the spotlight, but always with a smile on her face. She takes us on a journey through past, present and future projects.
She is a professional lifestyle and portrait photographer, recently she also works for restaurants, helping with food styling, design and creating social media content.
one of the cards we designed with @jularif
This is not her first trip to the wrongly named Grey City. When asked what brings her to Berlin, her modest smile widens and she responds with enthusiasm: "Berlin has almost become my second home - in the last few months alone I have been here many times, sometimes for longer periods. I love big cities and Berlin suits me particularly well, the people, the atmosphere. Last summer I took a filmmaking course and later came back to take part in the filming process. It was an incredible experience, a dream come true."
Julia became interested in photography as a teenager, using her father's Zenit camera and taking portraits of friends and classmates. Back then, she never imagined that one day she would be a professional. Then she set up her first Instagram page @julka8484 and immersed herself in the world of black and white images. At that point, she also started thinking about gaining a foothold in the magical land of photography: "I really delved deeply into the concept of photography, I learned a lot about different techniques. I was hungry for it, I literally absorbed all the knowledge."
She mainly published geometric and graphic images on her B&W account. "This is mainly because I miss the architecture in Antalya. Then I always looked for themes that somehow reminded me of the big city."
However, for the past five years she has been posting as @jularif, mainly Scandinavian lifestyle images, bouquets, snapshots and portraits of her sweet daughter Sophie. "When I had my daughter, I wanted to take even more home style and lifestyle photos and share them with the community. I was very interested in it, I wanted to learn how to take these beautiful pictures to capture the moments when we celebrate life. In all the photos you can see Sophie growing up."
When she talks about what photography means to her, she says she really enjoys it and hardly feels like work. It's the process that she really enjoys; from communicating with clients, to shooting, to the end, to post-production. "I couldn't imagine my life without photography."
Speaking about Instagram and the importance of the platform to her, she explains that she hasn't been maintaining the account as actively as she used to recently due to her busy schedule. "When I first started my Insta feed, I entered a lot of B&W competitions. There was a big B&W community back then. That was really fun. With @jularif, I also received a lot of support from other lifestyle Instagrammers as it was difficult to do lifestyle photography at first. There are so many people from all over the world, with a lot of inspiring accounts like @confettis , @foodstories and @kristinrogers to name a few of my favorites."
For her future, she is considering trying her hand at film set photography and film art. "I really believe that I could develop in this direction, so much so that I will probably apply for the cinematography course at the Babelsberg Film University in Potsdam."
