“I think if I take a normal portrait, the image is too sharp, it’s too much contrast, too much information,” says German-Czech photographer and director Jakub Gessler.

Sometimes he uses a longer exposure time to achieve his glazed-over aesthetic world, but he also has another box of tricks. “I have often put either Vaseline on my lens, or tights, so you just take tights and wrap them around the lens, and then you shoot through that. It just makes all the highlights glow a little bit.” The outlines become recessive, allowing everything else to be turned up a notch. “If a model smiles or is happy, then the smile is 10-20% too much. It might be even hysteric…. If they [appear] sad, then there’s a melancholy within it.”

Gessler is interested in taking everything slightly beyond reality. Distorting his camera lens is “one way of manipulating the photo and making it into a dream”, he says. Either that or a memory. There’s a strong nostalgic undercurrent in his work, thanks to a clear penchant for period styling but also kitsch poses and careful studio setups that feel more in step with the past rather than today’s nonchalant image culture. Even those hazy outlines reflect the indistinct contours of our memories.

Gessler’s instincts have always leaned towards art. He was once considering studying painting or sculpture, though he ended up on a photo design course instead. Even now, he plans his shoots with drawings, just like a painter might before they make a start on the canvas, and he hopes one day to see his work hanging in a museum. However, when he moved to London following his studies, he spent most of his time assisting and his work became “really commercial”.

It went on like this for years until the pandemic hit, and with all of his assisting work having temporarily dried up, he spent time looking through his personal projects – the work that is meant to feel the most like him. “They were just all shit. Like, really bad. And then I looked all the way back to the stuff I did at uni, and it was really interesting. The quality itself was maybe not there yet, but the ideas and the thought I put into the work were.”

This realisation set him on a mission to course-correct, and he made an effort to step out of other photographers’ shadows. The move from assisting to photographing hasn’t always been easy, though. He points out that people in the industry can look down on those who are making the switch from assistant to photographer – God forbid you’re still doing both. “Especially in the fashion industry, people can be very opinionated on those things,” he says. He believes it has even prevented people from being hired for shoots when creative directors or stylists have found out. “There can be a lot of hierarchy.”

Thankfully, Gessler is finding his stride, having developed a clear sense of identity in his work and attracted commissions from the likes of Gucci and Harry Styles’ clothing and beauty brand, Pleasing. He says Pleasing stands out as an example of when a commission has truly felt like it belongs to him. “For the first [commission], they really asked me how I would do it, and then I gave them my vision based on their idea, and they really went for everything and just let me do it. Maybe one or two images, they didn’t pick my favourite ones and picked another one, but an equally good one. It really felt 100% me.”

Of course, the most free rein comes in his self-initiated work – a prime example being his evolving project Family Portrait. What began in lockdown as a self-portrait with his cat grew into friends asking if he could take the same kind of picture for them, which spread to requests from their friends. “I got to talk to people I wouldn’t [usually meet]. I photographed a professional poker player in their 50s. I mean, how would you meet those people?” On the one hand, the photos are completely unserious, with their cheesy school photo aesthetic; on the other, they speak to his serious desire to elevate portraiture again.

“There are so many of those photos we take of our face, or we take a picture of somebody else’s face, but on a phone. The classic portrait just has no meaning anymore in this kind of sense. All the pictures we have up on Instagram or Facebook or Tumblr – they’re just brief moments, but then they [just stay] there. We never print them. We never do anything with them.”

His recent project hopes to remedy this. After his charity portrait sessions proved fruitful in December 2023, he released a publication that brings together 160 of these photos into a true family album – again for charity – called Family Portrait Magazine, created in partnership with graphic designer Colin Doerffler.

The pair also worked on an appropriately chintzy promotional video for the publication. Directed by Gessler, the film takes the form of a retro shopping channel featuring two try-hard hosts, and comes complete with its very own jingle, written by a musician friend. Besides showing his strong aesthetic tone, the small gaffes and awkward timing capture Gessler’s sense of humour.

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Family Portrait Magazine is the first project to come from a new entity he and Doerffler have set up called Family Affair Conspiracy, which he sees as a platform for creatives to work on projects for good, whether they’re publications or educational activities or events. After all, he says, “I guess teachers or doctors already give back to the world on a daily basis.”

His clear enthusiasm for these initiatives illustrates how his motivations have changed with time. When he was at university, his ambition was to shoot for big fashion brands. “But I think this doesn’t bring you happiness. I think happiness for me is more important now that I’m a little bit older, and for me it’s that I want to do my own work.”

@jakubgessler