Name of company:
Inna Andreeva, creative name Inna Banan. This is my name on Instagram and on my website, a catchy, easy-to-remember combination that people in the industry, including in Georgia, know me by.
Type of business
Fashion and editorial photography with a strong focus on art direction: I don’t just shoot to a brief, I build the whole image, from casting the models to the final aesthetic of the frame. I work with modeling agencies on portfolio and test shoots, shoot runway shows (Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi and local Georgian shows), and create concept editorial stories for international magazines.
I call my style “elegant punk”: a calm, confident display of quiet power and freedom, subtle irony, controlled provocation. I like to show my subject as strong, free, and in control of the space and of themselves, with cool distance and a touch of intellectual humor. It’s a rebellion that takes over space instead of adjusting to it. I wrote more about this idea in my essay “Elegant Punk”, published on Medium.
Location
I’m based in Tbilisi, Georgia, though my work reaches well beyond it. Since November 2023 I’ve been working with Look Models Management here in Tbilisi as a photographer and art director, including casting the models myself, alongside collaborations with Natali Model Agency, IC Model Management, and agencies and brands further afield, in Kazakhstan, the UK, Armenia, Ukraine, the US, and Austria.
My work has appeared in MOB Journal, The Diary, 17:23 Magazine, Vanguard Magazine, Artells Magazine, SELIN, OFF TOWN, and CHICLE MAG, including several covers, and I also write and publish essays on Behance, Substack, and Medium.
How long has the company been running?
I got interested in photography at age 10, I started shooting with our family camera and earned my first money from it. My mother noticed my interest and enrolled me in a photography course, where I studied light, color correction, and composition for a year. Photography never left my life after that, I kept shooting and learning, and today it’s my profession at a high level: it’s how I make my living, and it’s also what truly feeds and inspires me.
I’ve been working in fashion photography for about 3 years: I started collaborating with Look Models Management in November 2023, I’ve been regularly published in international magazines since 2025–2026, and in May 2026 I had my solo exhibition “The Face in Transition” in Art space “Zazerkalie”. In September 2025, I took part in the group exhibition “Transitions”, curated by Vova Shishak and Darya Shalunova.
Where did the idea come from?
I came to fashion photography about three years ago, starting with simple model tests and polaroids — the kind of shoots where you’re really just learning to see. Somewhere in that process, something shifted: I realised fashion was the language I’d been circling around since I was ten years old with my family’s camera. I love the range of faces and bodies in front of the lens, the choreography of a large professional team, directing the whole process instead of just capturing a moment inside it, and, above all, building images that carry my own point of view while still answering the client’s brief.
For me, fashion photography is a form of contemporary art: a way of putting something valuable, and a little rebellious, into the world. It was never about pressing a button. It’s about building something unique, stylish, and new, and about the exact moment a shoot stops being “a job” and becomes a piece of work I’d want to sign my name to.
What are your company values?
What matters most to me in my work is what happens between me and the person in front of the camera: I try to create a space where the model feels confident and free, not just someone following poses. Real teamwork matters just as much, working with stylists, make-up artists, and assistants not as separate roles each doing their own job, but as a shared creative vision — the best result comes when everyone brings their own eye. Photography, for me, isn’t a technical service; it’s a way to create something original and valuable that didn’t exist before that frame.
Currently, how many people work for the business?
I work solo as the author of my projects, but most of my work is the result of collaboration, with models and agencies (mainly Look Models Management), and, when needed, with assistants, stylists, make-up artists, gaffers, and videographers on a project basis. This is the standard way of working in fashion photography. I enjoy working in large teams of professionals, because together we create a better result.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a business?
Don’t be afraid to try what you’re drawn to, passion combined with your profession gives you a lot of strength and inspiration, and makes life feel meaningful. Keep learning, stay open to new things, act more and fear less: each of us is unique, and so is what we can contribute.
Where do you hope the company will be in 5 years’ time?
In five years, I want to be exactly where my work is already pointing: shooting fashion and editorial stories at a higher level, with my own exhibitions, and in real dialogue with the magazines, agencies, and designers whose work has shaped how I see a frame. France, and Paris in particular, is where a lot of that work already lives — I follow French runway shows, photographers, and stylists closely, and it’s the place where fashion becomes a language the whole industry speaks. I’d love to grow my practice there: developing exhibitions in spaces like Fisheye Galerie or Le BAL, publishing editorial stories with magazines such as Fisheye Magazine, and shooting for French runway shows and modelling agencies, building the same kind of long-term collaborations I already have in Georgia and beyond. Some of the people I already know in the industry, designers, stylists, photographers, are moving in that direction too, and I’d love to keep building toward that together with them.
Model: Anfisa Ermolina @goodbye.bonnie
Creative Director/Photographer: Inna Andreeva @inna.banan / https://inna-banan.com/
