A practice without a single label
Anastasiia “Stasia” Surkova and Shanaya “Naya” Santos are the two multidisciplinary creatives behind VOID, an independent creative house based in Los Angeles where fashion, photography, film, music, and visual storytelling converge. Trained in New York fashion schools, they shared a common frustration: the industry often demands a single job title at the expense of other impulses. Instead of narrowing their paths, they opened a space that can become whatever a project needs, a place where they do not have to pick just one medium or identity.
Origins and intent
VOID began as an answer to the pressure many young creatives face: choose one role and commit. For Surkova and Santos, that felt artificial. Their education introduced them to many parts of the industry, and as recent graduates they wanted to keep exploring rather than conforming. The name VOID signifies possibility, an open field where an idea can expand into whatever form best serves it. From the outset, their intention was clear, they would move freely between disciplines while remaining closely involved in every part of the work.
How the founders divide the work
The partnership rests on complementary strengths and a shared vision. Surkova primarily leads concept development, styling, production, visual strategy, and post-production. She constructs the narrative architecture of a project, ensuring that choices from clothing and location to color and editing support the central idea. Santos primarily leads photography, lighting, casting, makeup, and visual direction. She translates concepts into images, shaping atmosphere, emotion, composition, and the relationship between subject and camera. Each founder owns distinct responsibilities, but the work is not split into isolated silos; it is a continuous conversation.
A shared process from idea to delivery
Every VOID project begins with a concept both founders believe in and grows through research, references, and experimentation. They develop mood boards together, research visual references, cast talent, scout locations, source and style clothing, and plan production. Nearly everything is handled directly by Surkova and Santos: they photograph the work, oversee beauty, edit images, and shape the final presentation. This hands-on approach requires moving between creative and practical responsibilities, but it also ensures their original intention remains present at every stage.
Their collaboration is methodical and iterative. They challenge one another’s choices, exchange references, and stay closely involved from pre-production to final delivery. When collaborators such as models, designers, musicians, or other artists join a project, Surkova and Santos create a structure so everyone enters the same world. That structure protects the idea while allowing individual collaborators to contribute within a clearly defined visual and emotional context.
Work with fashion brands and artists
Through VOID, Surkova and Santos have produced fashion campaigns and editorials, developed visual identities for musicians and independent artists, and created original projects that investigate identity, femininity, belonging, transformation, and self-expression. Their imagery often sits between polished fashion photography and personal storytelling. Clothing in their work functions as part of a character’s logic rather than mere decoration, helping to carry emotion and meaning across a series of images or through a moving piece.
Performance of Self, an independent exhibition
One of their most ambitious undertakings is Performance of Self, an independently produced immersive exhibition staged in Downtown Los Angeles. The project examined how people construct, perform, protect, and reveal their identities, asking what remains when outside expectations are removed and how fashion, photography, movement, and personal memory shape self-presentation. The exhibition combined photography, film, sound, writing, and interactive installations, and included original work by VOID alongside pieces from emerging Los Angeles creatives they cast and coordinated. Approximately 100 people attended the one-night presentation.
Surkova and Santos managed the exhibition’s entire creative and physical production themselves. Their list of responsibilities ranged from concept development and selecting participating artists to casting, photographing and editing original work, curating the final selection, planning the layout, installing the show, creating promotional materials, marketing the event, and managing production on the night. The project allowed them to build an entire environment around a single idea and to connect fashion and image-making with community and audience participation.
Los Angeles, independence, and what’s next
Los Angeles has shaped VOID’s evolution by providing a city-scale community of people working across fashion, music, film, and art. Building VOID as recent graduates meant creating many of their own opportunities rather than waiting for permission to identify as creative directors, photographers, stylists, producers, or artists. They began doing the work and let the practice define itself through action. Each new project helps refine VOID’s identity, not as an agency offering disconnected services, but as an evolving creative practice with a consistent perspective.
What connects every VOID project is a conviction that creativity need not be confined to one medium or professional title. For Surkova and Santos, the ability to move between roles is not a compromise, it is the foundation of their partnership. VOID is both a reflection of who they are now and a structure that will continue to evolve with them, a place where different perspectives meet and ideas that might otherwise remain imagined are given space to become real.
