Camilo Him

Camilo Him is a Paris-based fashion photographer, artist and film director.

Early life
Camilo Him was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Both his parents are Chinese.

From an early age, Camilo showed interest in the arts, and in his teens, he exhibited his oil paintings at interscholastic art exhibitions. After high school, he moved to Southern California to study Urban Planning at Cal Poly, Pomona. However, after 3 years working in the field, he realized his true passion was fashion photography and decided to move to New York City.

Photography had been a fun hobby he picked up from a general education course while in University and had even led him to become the photo editor of the campus magazine: Opus.

Career
Camilo's images reflect the intensity of his design background. His works have been featured in international editions of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, L'Officiel, Elle and Vanity Fair magazines. He has photographed Hollywood celebrites such as: Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz, Morena Baccarin and Jesse Metcalfe.

In 1999, IMG Models, the number one international model management company in the world, asked Camilo to be the sole photographer to join them at a maiden model casting trip to St. Petersburg, Russia. The casting was attended by over 800 model hopefuls from all over Russia, Belarus and Ukraine and heralded the invasion of Slavic models into the fashion industry. Since then Camilo has travelled back to Russia and Ukraine a number of times as a celebrity guest judge in beauty pageant competitions (including Miss Russia) as well as in model/talent search events.

In 2001, Camilo was instrumental in organizing a few fashion shows in Ukraine featuring designs from top european fashion houses including Balmain, Balenciaga, and Emanuel Ungaro --at a time when the only well-known fashion labels there were Gucci and Versace. In 2003, Christophe Sauvat commissioned Camilo to organize a couple of fashion shows in Kiev for his Antik Batik label.

Beginning 2007, Camilo started traveling back to Los Angeles more often to photograph actors and celebrities. A few years later, after a casual dinner party at Carrie Fisher's bungalow with writer-producer Charles B. Wessler, Camilo got inspired to start writing himself and to learn the craft of film directing. However, it would not be until the Spring of 2013, when he met writer-director Shane Black (Iron Man 3) at another dinner party, that he knew the time was right for him to direct his first film.

In December 2013, Camilo began filming Exitus, a short thriller film he wrote. Exitus is a surreal story that takes place in both: the real world as well as in the dream world. The film is due to premier in September 2014 at New York Fashion Week. Camilo is also in pre-production for his second short film: Metalurgia which he plans to start filming in June 2014.

Exhibitions
On February 2013, Camilo hosted his first solo exhibition at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Entitled: Big Shows, the exhibit is a photo retrospective series that celebrates the excitement and vitality of New York Fashion Week at its infancy in the 1990's. Big Shows includes backstage and front row images of top designers, supermodels and celebrities representing the who's who of fashion and the Hollywood elite - then, as well as today.

The week long photo exhibit took place on February 7–14, 2013 and was attended by top fashion designers, celebrities and seen by over 120,000 invitation-only-attendees. Among the fashion designers that attended Camilo's exhibit were: Anna Sui, Carolina Herrera, Ralph Rucci, Carmen Marc Valvo, Patricia Field, Rebecca Minkoff, Dennis Basso, Lubov Azria, Zang Toi, Naeem Khan, Vivienne Tam, Reem Acra, Custo Dalmau and Mara Hoffman. Celebrities included: Sandra Bernhard, Karolina Kurkova, Selita Ebanks, Eve, Karlie Kloss, Nana Meriwether, Sean Young, Nigel Barker as well as Fern Mallis, the creator of New York Fashion Week.

All attending designers, celebrities and notable personalities signed Camilo's iconic photo of the DKNY mural with the Empire State building on the background. It is important to note that this marks the first time so many top fashion designers (not including celebrities) have signed a single item --it had never been attempted before.

Camilo donated all 30 (24” x 36”) aluminum prints from his exhibit to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for auction. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is a charity whose mission is the treatment and prevention of catastrophic diseases in children.

Anna Sui commented that Camilo's Big Shows photo exhibit represented her life 's work. Back in the 90's, Anna Sui, Todd Oldham and Marc Jacobs were the hottest up-incoming new American designers and the "Must-See-Shows" of New York Fashion Week.