For ‘Mono Metallic’, Arved Colvin-Smith reduced the colour palette significantly and gave beauty model Yuko plenty of room to use her expressive mimicry to define the emotional accents. Make-up artist Linda Öhrström lent support with a powerful, black and white, metallic look.

Which make-up artists did you work with for this new beauty series and why?
For this project with the wonderful Linda Öhrström, one of my favourite creative accomplices and long term co-conspirator on beauty shoots.

How did you come up with the concept?
Many of our shoots in the past have been full of colour, which I love. However, for this project I wanted to limit the colour pallette, I asked Linda to use only black, white or metallics.

What was it you did? In addition to cosmetics, you used other materials as well.
Unusually, all these looks are from products straight from the make up box, albeit with the occasional, nonconventional application.

What influences lie behind the concepts that you developed with the make-up artists?
A lot of it develops on the day, we actually start off with very loose ideas and let them come to life in front of the camera.

Which protagonists would you like to work with? Why?
Too many to mention.

Is it important to do these kind of free projects and, if so, why?
It is much more of a challenge than being told what to do.

If you had the possibility of producing a camera, what would you want it to be able to do?
It would be amazing to be able to control a camera directly from my brain - no buttons or controls, just by thought alone. And a sensor that NEVER has to be cleaned.