I       SEA         YOU is Irena Menk’s ongoing authorial photographic project, presented on this site. It serves as both her personal haiku and artistic anchor, reflecting a life lived largely overseas and by the sea - 9 cities & 6 different countries to date. For Menk, the SEA is a liminal space - literal, symbolic, and psychological - bridging self and other, reality and dream. Influenced by Jungian thought, her photography embraces surrealism as it naturally exists in the real world. Her images, often abstract yet minimally altered beyond color, follow a consistent framing language that aligns past, present, and future into a visual tide, always flowing back to the triad ‘I (the) SEA (&) YOU’, a meditation on water and time.

 

Menk’s photography giclée prints have been collected and shyly exhibited across Europe since 2020. Her work has been published in a prestigious worldwide art book launch by teNeus (2023) and featured as an inside cover for Italy’s D La Repubblica magazine summer edition (August 2025). She has also been featured on reputable specialized photography platforms including LensCulture (Netherlands), Fisheye Magazine (France), Der Greif (Germany) , Balkan Collective (Romania based); and has received multiple awards. 
 

APPENDIX //

Irena Menk is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and creative director from São Paulo, Brazil, based in Barcelona. She helped shape the visual editorial  language of ELLE Brasil’s print edition for several years, also spearheading its transition into the digital age through landmark projects, including LATAM’s first fashion iPad magazine and original fashion video content, receiving multiple professional awards. She since works internationally as a creative strategist and consultant. Her authorial object design practice -spanning numbered-edition jewelry and capsule artisanal glassware collection- has been published and sold internationally, including features in Vogue and specialized design publications.