How Jaša Müller Makes Portraits Feel Like Paintings

Behind the Image is an ongoing MODELS.com series taking a more personal look at both established and emerging creative talent.

Jaša Müller, Photographer

Hometown: Kočevje, Slovenia
Based In: Paris, France

What sparked your interest in photography, and what pulled you toward portraiture specifically?
One of my earliest memories is going to my grandma’s work office, where she had this big printer with a scanner. I used to put my face inside the scanner and print these strange little portraits. I still have them. Later we got a camera at home and I started taking pictures and filming videos. I grew up in a small town in Slovenia, and around the same time the internet became a big part of my life. Photography became a way to connect with people and a world that felt much bigger than the one I was growing up in. Portraits came naturally. I always liked photographing people, and self-portraits became a bigger part of my work in my early twenties. It started very simply, just out of convenience. With self-portraits I was always there, so whenever I had a burst of creative energy I could just act on it. It solved my problem of wanting to create but never having a picture to work on.

Your creative process is quite tactile: printing, physically working back into images, rephotographing, and layering with color. How did you arrive at that process, and was it a conscious pursuit or did it emerge more instinctively over time?
It was very gradual. I always felt drawn to images that felt a bit less clean, less fixed, less polished. Before I started printing and physically working on my images, I was trying to get a similar feeling directly in camera by putting things in front of the lens, blurring things, and experimenting with different materials and effects. I remember having to print images for a school project. Something just clicked when I saw them on paper. They felt completely different from seeing them on a screen. After that I started printing images at a local store and playing around with them. What I love is the materiality of it. Once an image is printed, it suddenly introduces all these new variables: the paper, the texture, the way light hits it. Even the smallest change can completely shift the feeling of an image. I found that really exciting, and I still do.

How would you describe your work? What’s your trademark?
If there’s one thing that keeps recurring in my work, it’s probably the white background. But for me it was never really about the background itself. It was about limitation. I actually feel most creative when I have some sort of restriction. In a way, being able to do anything is, for me, the biggest limitation. Whether it’s a white background, a fashion brief, or one specific subject, I like having something to respond to. Maybe that’s also how I would describe my work. It’s usually about taking something very simple and seeing how far I can push it and make it interesting, it’s a kind of challenge.

Your portraits feel like they sit somewhere between photography and painting. Is that something you were formally trained in, or entirely self-taught?
I went to photography school and later studied fine arts, but I was always developing my own work outside of school. I actually think that’s where I learned the most. I was always more interested in creating something than just photographing what was already there. I like images that feel like they belong to their own world, and I think that’s probably where the painting influence comes from. I also developed a way of working with shadows over time. My images are usually quite flat before I start working on them, and then I repaint the shadows back into the image. It’s very subtle, but I think that’s also one of the things that makes the work feel a bit more painterly.

What draws you to a subject, and how do you build trust with the people you photograph?
Most of the time I just trust my gut. As soon as a project or a person comes my way, I usually know pretty quickly if it’s something I connect with or not. It’s not always easy to explain, but I’ve learned to trust that feeling. As for trust, I think people trust me when I trust myself. Maybe that’s naive, but it’s how I work. I don’t like too much pressure, and I don’t like feeling like everything has to go exactly according to plan. I get most inspired in the moment. I like leaving room for accidents, ideas, and things that weren’t expected. I think people relax when they feel that openness.

What non-fashion influences (art, film, literature, music, etc.) shape your creative perspective?
Lately I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from paintings, especially the way they build environments, backgrounds, and compositions. I think it’s also because I’m trying to move a little away from the kind of images I’ve been making until now and see where else they can go. That’s something that excites me a lot at the moment. I also get inspired while I’m working. Sometimes it’s a mistake, sometimes it’s an accident, sometimes it’s just something unexpected that happens on set. If something feels interesting, I usually try to follow it and see where it leads.

What have you watched, heard, or read lately that has inspired you?
I’ve been really obsessed with the work of Metka Krašovec, a Slovenian painter. Her work is so good. I could stare at her paintings all day.

What’s something outside of your work that you would like people to know about you?
I love making music when nobody is around. It’s always been something I only do for myself, and it’s nice having something that’s just for me. I played saxophone for years, and I also play guitar.

What’s been the most challenging moment in your career, and what did you take away from it?
Probably my first year in Paris. It was one of the most exciting years of my life, but also one of the most stressful. I was really happy to be there, but at the same time I was constantly worried that it wouldn’t work out and that I would have to move back home. The biggest thing I learned was to create opportunities instead of waiting for them to happen. Before that, I was always waiting for that exciting email to come through and give me something to work on. But you can’t really survive like that. I had to start making my own projects, reaching out to people, and staying consistent even when nothing exciting was happening. Once I started doing that, things slowly began to move. Action creates reaction.

Who’s one to watch?
My friend @uglyroscino. We’ve worked on so many projects together over the last few years, and I love having him on set. He’s incredibly fast, super easy to work with, and we understand each other’s process really well. Because I paint on top of a lot of my images in post, I like keeping the makeup quite balanced, and I think we’ve found a really nice way of working together where both of our worlds can exist in the same image!

Selected Work

Paper Magazine April 2026 Cover
This project will always be very special to me. The reaction it received was honestly quite surreal and something I really didn’t expect. Meeting Ayo (Edebiri) and the whole team was amazing, and it ended up being one of the most enjoyable shoots I’ve done. We had a lot of fun making this one!

Portraits, 2025-present
This is an ongoing portrait project I’m working on in Paris. It has introduced me to so many amazing people. I photograph people I connect with or find inspiring. Most of the portraits are taken in my apartment in Paris. The actual picture usually only takes a few minutes, but before that we normally have a cigarette together on the balcony and chat for a bit. It’s kind of become a little ritual before taking the portrait.

Self-Portrait, 2023
This is one of my early self-portraits. At the time I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in my life. I just knew I wanted to make things, and I was chasing a feeling that felt right, even if I had no idea where it would lead. I remember a lot of people saw this image and responded to it. It might also be the image that got me my first fashion project. Back then I was living with five people in an apartment and sharing a room with one of my best friends. There was a white wall in the room where I shot all of my portraits. Everything happened very quickly back then, and I really loved that simplicity.

Dance as One for AnOther Man China
This is one of my most recent projects, a cover story for AnOther Man China. It feels like it points toward where I want to take my work next. For a long time I was mostly working with white backgrounds and building everything around the subject. Recently I’ve become much more interested in environments and backgrounds again, and this was one of the first projects where I really started exploring that. This shoot really made me excited about what comes next!

Untitled, 2016
I was sixteen when I took this image. I remember I was really proud of it. The two girls in the picture are friends I’ve known since I was a child. I’m an only child, but they always felt like little sisters to me. It’s different from the work I make today, but I still really love this image.