Models are usually seen in their final polished form, across the glossy pages of a magazine, blown-up in ads on city billboards or scrolled past in curated Instagram carousels. But in Model Check-In, top model and tech writer Nassia Matsa turns the camera around, creating an archive of her experience behind the scenes in the industry.

The project comes from Matsa’s own unconventional route into the modelling world. Before becoming a full-time model, the Athens-born, London-based creative was working as a writer on technology and culture, having already completed two master’s degrees. After being scouted as a club kid, her career quickly grew into campaigns for countless high fashion brands, global runway shows and over 200 shoots.

Assembling images from the beginning of her career in 2017 up until the present, the project began as a way of documenting a world that at first felt surreal. Transitioning from a traditional 9-5 into modelling, Matsa found herself caught up in a whirlwind of different locations, long haul flights and endless fittings. “It felt like an out of body experience at first,” she says. “I was part of the diversity wave, so it never occurred to me that this could be my everyday life.” 

The duality of her role as both model and journalist underpins the creation of Model Check-In. “As a journalist I got access to sets that press is not allowed [to see],” she explains. “And as a model I got to have that journalistic eye of how to create a story and peel off the glamour.” While the project began as a personal documentation, it eventually became a way of taking control of how the world around her was recorded. “Usually they take pictures of me, so this is an archive of what I see when I am on set.”

The project features candid photographs of airport pickup signs, ornage sunsets through plane windows, runway call sheets, bruised knees, cheap hotel breakfasts and make-up touchups. “We manufacture a fantasy in fashion where everything is curated from the beginning to the end of the process,” she says, pointing to the set, makeup, poses, editing and final placement of the images that reach us. “I tend to prefer unedited pictures with no Photoshop, so this was my way of documenting that fantasy.”

Alongside the glamour of it all, the project captures the less polished realities of modelling. While editing the images, Matsa noticed something she hadn’t expected: the physical toll of modelling on her body. “I thought I was complaining a lot that my feet hurt but in retrospect I saw why.” The photographs show bruised legs, skin-deep imprints from garments and the burnt out aftermath of long days on set. “Before I started modelling I thought that they dress you, they paint you and off you go,” she says. “I didn’t realise how much physical pain was involved in the process.”

Rather than turning the project into a traditional photobook, Matsa chose to present Model Check-In as a small bag charm. Explaining this choice, she references Lucian Freud’s Her Majesty the Queen painting: “You think it’d be on a big glorious canvas with gold framing but actually it’s tiny and closer to A5 measurements. It plays on the belief in art that if you want to make something dramatic, go big. Instead I liked that idea of making it small, almost like an iPhone, as these are the measurements that we mostly consume fashion and photography now.”

As her career continues to ascend, the project has grown alongside her own sense of belonging within the industry. “I always felt like an outsider coming from a different industry and looking different from the beauty standards that I grew up with in Athens,” she says. “Now I feel that I am part of the industry, and it is a way of documenting my experience of that particular era.”

Model Check-In is available to purchase online here, with copies also available from July 13 via Brother LDN and Milkwhite Athens.