This is a weekly series where we feature our incredibly talented Adolescent members and their work! Sign up here to join the Adolescent Membership and be part of the @ family!

This week’s Adolescent Member Crush is Paola Trusendi, a Swiss-Colombian photographer and cinematographer based in LA. To say the least, Paola stays busy—she’s repped by Adolescent, works with Lithium Magazine, and is a part of the BuzzFeed team. Read below to learn more about what she learned at SCAD, what it was like to work with Savage x Fenty and VICE, and where she gets inspiration! 

Adolescent Content: You’ve shot with a lot of the BuzzFeed team—so cool! How did you get involved with them?

Paola Trusendi: I started working at BuzzFeed almost two years ago. I got connected through a college friend, and I started meeting genuinely cool people that I love working with. I’ve found a creative and supportive little family at BuzzFeed that I’ll forever be grateful for.

Adolescent: What has it been like to work with Lithium and Adolescent?

Paola: It has been a dream! I started working with Lithium before Adolescent, and through them I’ve been pushed creatively to generate new content. Finding someone that believes in my work and wants to see more of it has been incredibly inspiring.  It’s amazing to have platforms to showcase my work while being pushed to the next level.

^{shot for Fenty}

Adolescent: You graduated summa cum laude from SCAD—congrats! What was your art school experience like?

Paola: I loved it! Despite what a lot of people have to say about art school, I do think you get out what you put into it. I made some of my closest friends there, and it helped me connect with people and experiences I’d never thought of before.

Adolescent: How does being Swiss-Colombian inform your work?

Paola: Having been raised in a multicultural home, my experiences made me realize the relevance of diversity in all realms. It’s opened a world of culture mix that I am grateful for. It’s allowed me to see the world with multiple perspectives and be very appreciative of and respectful toward what me or someone else might consider different, so I try to be as inclusive as I can in my work.

^{published for Vogue Italia}

Adolescent: Who do you cite as inspiration for your work?

Paola: I feel I get inspiration from everywhere: experiences, people, movies, locations, time periods, etc. I don’t think I have a specific artist in mind that I would attribute my inspiration to.

Adolescent: What was it like to be featured in Savage x Fenty and VICE?

Paola: Being featured was really cool! To understand that my work was good enough to be featured, made me appreciate myself more. I realize I can sometimes be my worst enemy and end up blocking myself from opportunities like these. Now, I try to share my work with as many people I can—the worst thing that can happen is, well, nothing. Best thing is I get featured in my favorite magazine or media company.