"The Power of Books" 2003

Mladen Penev is an Austria-based photographer and retoucher who is known for creating unusually stunning and hard hitting artworks.

It was his university project, "Power of Books" that he worked on in the year 2003 that caught our attention. This project featured a man standing with an open book exploding blood on his face (the image on the left).

Later he created an entire series based on this idea which is absolutely amazing and hard-hitting. This series spread on the internet like wildfire and also became a hit (Explore Penev's website for the entire series).

The artist has completed his graduation in the year 2005 from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He initially started his career in advertising but after a few years he called it quits and became a fulltime creative retoucher and photographer.

Penev has been doing what he does the best for sometime now. He has worked for some really famous agencies on some famous brands like Nike, Heinken and Pepsi. He is also doing retouching work for Staudinger + Franke, a Vienna-based visualization studio.

He has also won a lot of awards and has exhibited his work throughout Europe. Though he is a very busy man but we were able to get in touch with the artist personally for a quick interview and here's what the artist shared with us:

Happy reading!

1. Hello Mladen, please tell us a little about yourself to our readers.

I'm a art director, photographer and creative retoucher living and working in Vienna, Austira.
Originally, I am from bulgaria but I came here to study in 1999.

2. What inspired you to get into the world of art? Were you always artistically inclined?

Yes, I loved drawing already as a child, then followed the art school and than the art university.

3. Tell us a bit about your artistic journey. What all artforms have you dabbled in? What is your favorite genre of art?

In the art school my favorite subject was Printmaking. I loved techniques like Etching, Woodcut and Aquatint. It was during my time there that I got inspired to get into graphic designing.

I studied Graphic designing for a year in the Arts Academy in Sofia, where I mostly learned a lot about Typography and Poster Design. Back then I started taking pictures and learning basic darkroom techniques. Photography became my favorite genre of art. In 1999 I came to Vienna and was accepted at the University of applied arts in the Graphic Design and Advertising class, where I graduated in 2005. During my study I got in touch with the creative retouching. I had some basic knowledge, but because of the advertising I suddenly had the chance to adopt some techniques and tricks from professionals working in the industry.

"Cosmetic Surgery" 2003

"United" 2006

4. As a photographer what is your favourite hardware in terms of the camera and lens combination? And your favorite retouching software?
The hardware is always changing. You just bought a new great camera and you realize that there is a new and a better one available in the market. At the end hardware doesn't matter, I made many of my personal works back in 2003 with a 3.5 megapixel compact camera. If the goal is to have really detailed huge print with a lot of depth than you need the high end camera back with 80+ megapixel or a large format analog. The impact and the expression are more important for me even if the image is pixelated or blurry.

5. Tell us something about your powerful photo manipulation series. Are these all commissioned pieces of work?

Most of the very complex compositing are commissioned. Sadly, I don't have a lot of time for my personal works, most of them are created during and right after my university studies.

"CAUTION Illegal Border Crossing" 2006

"GAME OVER" (Diploma) 2005

"GAME OVER" (Diploma) 2005

Actually this was a university project. The task was to make an advertising campaign for the library association here in Austria. The funny thing is that the client did like the idea but rejected it because it was "too strong"! So they took another visual.

Then my retouching instructor inspired me to make a whole series out of the idea and I made the rest of the images. It was 2003.

Actually the project was never used as advertising. At some point it was stolen from a Swiss advertising agency to promote a local Culture Magazine, but they had to take it down after a few legal talks.

I would like to refresh the project for the 10th anniversary, if I find the time of course.

7. How do you promote your work? Apart from exhibitions do you use social media networks? Do you think eCommerce has changed the playing field for small players and small businesses?

I launched my web site in 2003, and placed some of my works in some graphic design and arts portals where i'm not represented anymore. I don't know how but after very short time I got really a lot visits and traffic trough my site. sometimes I have up to 3000 unique visits per day. I don't use Facebook or any other social media networks.

Commissioned work for health product, created with Staudinger + Franke, 2008

Commissioned work for Mercedes Benz, CGI by Christo Penev

Cooking and traveling probably.

9. What other artists do you draw inspiration from? If you could work on a joint project with one of them, who would it be and why?

Gregory Crewdson is one of the artists I admire. I would love to work with hime if I get the chance.

10. What are your future plans as an artist? Any dream project that you would absolutely love to work on?

Not in particular. there are so many projects I would like to work on if I have the time.

11. One piece of advice that you would like to give to budding and aspiring artists?

Be unique if that's possible at all :)

Thanks Mladen for taking out the time and doing this interview with us. We'd like to wish you the very best for the future.

Stay tuned for more of such exclusive interviews from E-junkie.