The empty studio stage with a single stand and a pale cyclorama
1:40

Hala B · ul. Tymienieckiego 22 · Łódź · four people

A ROOM
AND A KNIFE

Kartonaż began in 2019 when Zofia Hałas could not afford a location and started building them instead. Six years later the building is the point, and the room is 14.2 metres long.

Rolls of coloured background board in the paper store
Paper store, 3.2 × 2.4 m · 14 colours · restocked monthly
Folded sheets of coloured board stacked at an angle
300 gsm, 1 400 × 1 000 mm · 1 062 sheets cut since 2019

What the studio is for

We are not a location.
We are the thing in the location.

Most fashion pictures borrow a room. Ours builds one, out of board, at a magnification that makes the garment behave strangely — a coat in front of a doorway eight times too small, a shoe beside a chair the size of a pin. The scale is the idea, and the scale is also the schedule: a set at 1:1 takes a day to build, a set at 12:1 takes eight. We publish both numbers before anyone signs anything, because a studio that hides the build days is a studio that will ask for them back later.

We shoot about fourteen paid days a year. That is deliberate. The work is slow, the board sags after three hours of light, and the only way we know to keep the shadows honest is to put fewer of them in the world.

Everything we have built, 2019–2025

Plate 02 — Hala B, drawn at 1:40

The whole studio, to scale

Floor plan of Hala B at 1:40 showing the 14.2 by 9.6 metre stage, the cyclorama, the cutting bench, the paper store, three 32 amp drops and the 3.1 metre loading doorCYC 6.0 × 4.0cutting bench 4.0 × 0.9PAPER STORE3.2 × 2.4 · 14 coloursloading door 3.1 m →32 A32 A32 Acamera, 138 mm, 1.42 m lens height14.20 m9.60 m

Height5.40 m to the truss, 4.80 m of usable hang. Anything above 2.6 m of set is counterweighted.

AccessGround floor, 3.1 m door, van to bench in under two minutes. No lift, which is why we have never built above 3.2 m.

Hire2 800 zł a day with Mikołaj, the cyc, three 32 A drops and 20 sheets. Blackout to the whole stage.

Four people, one bench, no agency

Portrait of a woman lit by a hard teal key against a built paper wall
Zofia Hałas · lead image-maker and founder · Łódź Film School 2012, nine years assisting in Warsaw before this room existed. Shoots every day the studio books; has never delegated a key light.
Portrait of a man in a dark jacket against a pale wall
Mikołaj FerencPaper engineer. Trained as a joiner, learned board from scenery. Decides what will stand up and what will not, and is usually right before the glue is out.
Portrait of a young woman against a soft green background
Ines AbramDigi-tech and colour. Builds the profile on the first frame of every job, so the file you open is the file we looked at on the day.
Portrait of a man in a white shirt against a strong red ground
Bartek RyśStudio manager. Owns the calendar, the invoices and the loading door. Answers the phone between 08:00 and 19:00, Tuesday to Saturday.
A photographer and a model working together under a single studio light
Everyone elseStylists, hair, make-up and second assistants come in per job. We keep a list of eleven people in Łódź and Warsaw and will send it with the quote.
Crew day rates
Book the room
“We asked for a backdrop. They sent back a plan of a room that did not exist yet, with our shoe drawn in it at eight times life size, and then they went and built it.”
OS

Dariusz Węcław

Head of marketing, Ostoja Shoes

Series 013 · January 2025 · 22 sheets

1 062

sheets of 300 gsm board cut since November 2019

14

paid shoot days in 2025, and that is the ceiling

5 h 26

mean build time per logged day, against 2 h 13 of frames

2

sets that collapsed mid-shoot, both rebuilt at our cost

Hala B · Tuesday to Saturday

SEE THE
ROOM

Visits take twenty minutes and we will show you the paper store, which is the only part anyone remembers. Bring the garment if you have it.

Book a visit
See the work first