Photographer, creative director, observer.

Artist Talk is a series by Densi where we speak with artists about the intersections of life and practice. As artists ourselves, these conversations are an ongoing way of understanding how creativity takes root, and how we can continue to cultivate its power.

Sydney-based photographer and creative director Ryan Cullen grew up outside Byron Bay and has built a career spanning editorial, fashion and fine art. Known for his vivid portraiture, evocative landscapes and elemental still life, his aesthetic is intimate and precise - the product of an eye that has always moved slowly, looked carefully, and found beauty in unexpected places.

Art in three words: Inspiration, frustration, release.

On being an artist –

“Oh my, I think I would struggle to use that word [artist] even now - though I knew from a very early age that I wanted my future to be within the creative field.”

Ryan came to the creative world slowly - his word, and one that feels deliberate. He has moments of putting himself out there, and when he does, they tend to pay off. But a lot of the time, he says, he finds himself waiting to be invited. “I am perpetually feeling like an imposter.” It’s a surprisingly open admission from someone with the career he has built.

He counts himself lucky in many ways, but the barriers he has faced have been real - quieter, perhaps, but persistent. Building a practice that spans editorial, fashion, and fine art has meant navigating a landscape that doesn’t always know where to place him. “It’s so easy to be categorised,” he says, “especially within the ‘content’ space where there isn’t a lot of legitimacy placed on your work. To move out of that realm has been hard, but” - he queries - “maybe a lot of that has been self imposed.”

On seeing –

“I think I have the ability to find beauty in almost anything, no matter how obscure.”

One of his earliest photographs, one that has stayed with him, was taken on the streets of New York. Just piled-up trash bags. “I really am drawn to perhaps the more classic idea of beauty as opposed to more grunge or counter,” he says, “but with the texture and the colour I found it, and still find it, classically beautiful.” It’s a useful window into how he sees: not chasing the unconventional for its own sake, but finding the classical within the overlooked.

Being a photographer means seeing the world through a more literal lens - he acknowledges the pun - so whenever he can, he tries to abstract that. To look past the obvious. It’s an instinct that runs through all of his work, whether editorial, fashion, or fine art. “They all share the same feeling to me,” he says.

On process –

“I would like to think it is led by intention, and it definitely is going into it. But when the time arrives, I feel as though I enter a dissociative state, for better or for worse.”

Ryan plans a shoot with intention. Then something else takes over. He has a strong sense of when a shoot has momentum, but what resonates on the day can be completely different to what sings to him in the edit. The gap between making and seeing is where a lot of the work happens.

His visual language has, on reflection, stayed more consistent than he expected. “I will think it has changed drastically,” he says, “and when I go back, it really hasn’t, the same feeling is always there. It just seems to morph and shift with the tools I use over time.”

On inspiration –

“In moments of prolonged quiet - for me that’s usually only found on a long haul flight with no wifi.”

Nature and new environments are where Ryan is most inspired. But his most reliable and unexpected creative space is specific: a long haul flight, offline, headphones on. Not sketching or editing - just listening to different frequencies, singing bowls, letting his mind wander and visualise. “It rarely unveils a specific idea for a shoot,” he says. “I just find it rather invigorating.”

There’s something telling about that - that the most generative thing isn’t a specific prompt or place, but simply the conditions for uninterrupted thought. Space, quiet, and the permission to not arrive anywhere in particular.

On residency –

“Never but I really want to do one! I think in my mind photography residencies didn’t exist - more so painting, writing, etc.”

Ryan has never done a residency, partly because he’d never really considered that they existed for photographers. The assumption that residencies belong to painters and writers is one he’s held without questioning, until now.

His dream residency is somewhere secluded, in nature, one to three months. He imagines it less as an intensive period of making and more as a long haul flight on land: a place to recharge, to think and let ideas arrive in their own time. “It would be more of a place to recharge and selectively create throughout,” he says.

The fact that he’d never considered photography residencies as an option points to something worth naming: the assumption that certain forms of practice are more ‘residency worthy’ than others. Platforms like Densi exist, in part, to challenge exactly that.

See more of Ryan's work - here

ryancullen.com