Real Life Bites: Model Yasmin El Yassini on the Unstructured Beauty of Her Career
Words & Images: Yasmin El Yassini
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Modelling means basically waiting around a lot. It’s pretty unreliable, especially if you don’t come from money or aren’t a supermodel or influencer or celebrity, but it has also taught me so much about patience and not taking things too seriously or personally. Sometimes you work every day in a row and sometimes there is a month in between shoots.
Because of this, it can be difficult to find a sort of structure for yourself. The time I’ve documented here was one of those waiting periods. Sometimes a day is just rotting in bed watching a film one after the other or some silly show in one go, but not every day can be like that.
I do have some things I like to do to give me some form of structure and routine, like practising transcendental meditation – every morning and evening, each for 20 minutes. Transcendental meditation actually changed my life! I could talk for hours about it. I actually have a video online, on YouTube, where I talk with my partner about it.
Something else I like to do to impose a bit of structure is going for a big walk with my dog in nature. It’s honestly my favourite thing to do in life. His name is Parper but he currently goes by Rinny, Rinny Rinny. He’s my favourite being ever. He’s my partner's dog but we are soulmates. I have a really deep connection to him and he’s helping me with so many struggles in life. I love him so much.
I like to take photos when I’m out in nature. Nature is my safe place. I do find the city life very exhausting and overwhelming, I do make sure to have at least one day a week nature time to recharge myself. I find myself feeling very childlike and free in nature. Taking photos and videos of myself means self care and time with myself. I find it very helpful and therapeutic to regain the power over myself, after being always photographed. Also, it’s my creative way to express myself and to get to know myself. There’s a Polaroid photo here, shot on my Polaroid Go, that looks like a self-portrait, but I actually looked through the lens to make sure what the angle, lighting was good and then let my partner take the photo. It was a cool exercise in thinking about how I’m viewed by others, and how I want myself to be seen.
I enjoyed taking photos with the Polaroid cameras as you have to prepare it better than taking hundreds of selfies which all only came out a little different from the last. It’s also the best thing ever to have a photo of you in a physical format!
On this day, I was so excited to get out and make some images. I was feeling a bit unmoored between jobs, but me and my partner luckily have an amazing forest and a big forest park close by that makes it so convenient to get in there. The sound of birds, the change of colours on the trees, the fresh air, the sometimes muddy floors really stimulates me and reconnects me to life, my path, and to myself. I love trees – with leaves or bare, they are the veins to heaven. I feel very inspired and reconnected with life deeply being in nature. It’s so nourishing to see all sorts of forms and shapes.