Yuliya Panchenko began Forbidden Frames with a gap in the archive. While researching the history of boudoir photography, she found abundant evidence of the nude in painting and photography, yet surprisingly little coherent documentation of boudoir as a genre before the late twentieth century.
The absence raised a question. If the history was difficult to find, could a contemporary photographer use historical cameras to reconstruct a possible version of it?
That idea became an ambitious framework: 100 cameras, roughly 100 years, 100 locations and 100 subjects.
When the camera becomes the main character
The project is not simply about making intimate portraits with old equipment. For Panchenko, the camera itself is one of the central subjects. Each episode begins with a different historical device, often one she has never used before. She does not choose the film stock and learns the mechanics on location.
She had never worked with film cameras before starting the project, so every apparent gain in confidence is interrupted by a new mechanism, process or limitation. That forced instability has become part of the structure.
Learning photography because she needed it
Panchenko’s relationship with photography began much earlier through drawing and an interest in the female form. Cameras were not easily accessible during her childhood. After moving to the United States for university, she and her husband bought an entry-level camera because making their own wedding photographs was cheaper than hiring a photographer.
The experiment changed her direction. She had recently graduated in Hospitality and Tourism Management but was living somewhere with few opportunities in that field. Photography became both a creative discovery and an economic necessity.
She photographed weddings, families and other assignments for several years before reaching an artistic block. The camera, she felt, was doing too much of the work. She wanted to become more deliberate.
Starting over deliberately
A year of mentorship with photographer Brett Florens became a reset. Panchenko stepped away from client work and focused on posing, lighting, composition and technical control. At the end she removed her previous portfolio and rebuilt it around the photographer she wanted to become.
A bride then asked her to make a boudoir session. Panchenko had never photographed one. Accepting the request opened the practice that would eventually become her professional focus.
Trust has to be earned
Intimate photography depends on more than photographic technique. Panchenko emphasises trust, professionalism and the ability to create a space in which the person being photographed feels safe.
Forbidden Frames pushes that principle further through its own challenge rule. If an attempt with a historical camera fails, Panchenko becomes the subject for the next attempt. The rule makes vulnerability reciprocal: she is unwilling to ask someone else to take a risk she would refuse herself.
That choice has carried professional consequences, including lost sponsorships and speaking opportunities, but for Panchenko it is inseparable from the integrity of the project.
A $5 camera can still make the photograph
The first cameras taught her how little standardisation exists across mechanical photography. Different designs solve the same basic problem in entirely different ways. They also reinforced another lesson: expensive equipment does not guarantee an important photograph.
A five-dollar camera can produce an image with more life than one made with equipment costing thousands. Resolution and sharpness matter, but they are not substitutes for light, composition and intention.
Analogue photography also changed her digital practice. Having fewer frames forced her to establish pose and light before pressing the shutter. She now carries that economy into digital sessions, trying to make each frame distinct rather than producing long sequences of nearly identical photographs.
When old technology refuses to cooperate
The project’s failures are part of its history. For one episode, Panchenko and her team spent hundreds of dollars sourcing original film for a Polaroid 850 Land Camera, hoping that at least one pack from roughly forty years ago would still work. None did.
Rather than abandon the camera, they converted it to use 120 film.
The episode represents the larger project: repairs, failed film, testing, waiting, redevelopment and months added to the schedule. Forbidden Frames cannot be rushed because each camera dictates its own production problems.
Culture changes the meaning of intimacy
Working across the United States, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and future locations makes the project as much about cultural attitudes as technology. Museums, architecture, language and local ideas about nudity change what intimate photography means in each place.
Some cultures read boudoir primarily through taboo; others connect it more readily with self-expression. Resistance never disappears entirely. That tension between art, intimacy and what a society considers acceptable sits at the centre of the project.
Why Berlin matters
Berlin is one of the places Panchenko hopes to add to the journey. She is interested in bringing together the city’s reputation for artistic openness, the history visible in its streets and German-made analogue cameras.
The combination would create a chapter in which equipment, geography and subject share the same historical context: a German camera used in Berlin to construct another possible fragment of intimate photographic history.
History does not need perfection
Panchenko ultimately wants Forbidden Frames to become a book that documents the successes, failures and workarounds across all 100 cameras.
The lesson she hopes remains is permissive rather than technical. A camera can be cheap. Focus can be missed. Exposure can fail. Vulnerable art does not need universal approval to deserve preservation.
If part of boudoir photography’s earlier history disappeared because intimate images were hidden, destroyed or never treated as worth documenting, Forbidden Frames responds by refusing disappearance. It creates an archive deliberately, one imperfect camera at a time.
Developing Stories is a Berlin Photo Studio editorial series about the people, memories and lives behind photographic practice.
