Alina Tsvor, 21, is a photography/arts management major at Columbia and gives a whole new meaning to the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Through her photography, she captures a combination of colors, fashion and storytelling. Whenever she is behind the camera, you can always count on a story to go with it.
“I really like storytelling and I do that with photos,” says Tsvor. “I lean more towards fashion photos. I try to make it as a story, a fantasy or something, because it’s not just about the clothes and it’s not just about the girl. I want it to have something in it that people can relate to.”
Everything has a story and Tsvor doesn’t hesitate to capture it. She’s often inspired by what’s around her.
“That’s why I don’t like shooting in a studio, because you’re so limited,” she explains. “But when you’re out there, you’d find a beautiful house and that alone has a story behind it.”
Tsvor moved from Belarus, Russia to Springfield, Massachusettes with her parents in September 2000. She picked up her first camera her sophomore year in high school and began taking pictures of any and every thing.
“I wasn’t good at it either, but I would take pictures and post them to MySpace,” says Tsvor.
She got her first real camera her senior year. On her birthday she invited a lot of people over but no one brought her a gift.
“I thought that was kind of weird,” she recalls. “At the end of the day they gave me this little box and I opened it, and in it it was all of the cash put together for a new camera for me. It was over $1,000 dollars.”
From then on she never put the camera down, loving all that photography had to offer. When she graduates she plans to start working at a talent agency or a modeling agency to photograph their models in hopes to get her foot in the door of the fashion industry. Eventually, she wants to shoot for fashion magazines.
“Vogue,” she says with a laugh. “I picked up a Vogue magazine and I’ve honestly seen all of those pictures before because I’m constantly on fashion blogs, art blogs and photo blogs. It’s all I read. I spend so much time there it gives me so much inspiration. Anything that can visually inspire me, I’m there. I’m watching it.”
She fears that she won’t be able to do high fashion, but she has a good eye and can always tell what’s missing. She has always been told that she’s “spot on” and even her teachers think she should be an editor, except she has her eye on something bigger: fashion.
“I won’t be able to do the real stuff. I don’t want to just start doing senior portraits,” says Tsvor. “I think that’s what will drive me away from it. I want to create things. I want to do unconventional things. I want it to be live and out there, and I want it to speak to a lot of people. If I can’t do that, then I don’t want to do it at all.”