Paula Zuccotti is a multi-hyphenated creative who transformed from industrial designer to design ethnographer to future archaeologist. Born in Buenos Aires, she moved to London on a British Council scholarship and spent 12 years at Seymour Powell before launching her groundbreaking project "Everything We Touch."
This unique documentary project photographs every single object a person touches in one day, from waking to sleeping, creating powerful visual stories that reveal hidden truths about how we live. Paula has captured over 100 people's days across the globe - from cowboys to geishas, two-year-olds to indigenous hunters. ~
Her work emerged from childhood observations of her grandmothers' different lifestyles and evolved into a method for understanding human behavior, cultural shifts, and societal changes. During COVID lockdown, she created a global archive of people's "15 essentials," collecting 1000 photos from 50 countries that revealed how humanity coped with unprecedented uncertainty.
Key Takeaways
- Observe with purpose - Paula's childhood habit of quietly watching people became her professional superpower, proving that curiosity about human behavior can become a career
- Create your own methodology - When Paula discovered design ethnography in a magazine, she pitched it to her employer and literally created her future role through initiative
- Find stories in the everyday - The most mundane objects tell profound stories about who we are, how we live, and what we value in ways curated social media never could
- Embrace being the "frog from another pond" - Paula thrives by being the observer in new environments, taking time to understand before asserting her voice
- Document disappearing worlds - Technology changes rapidly, but Paula captures how we interact with objects as they evolve and become obsolete
- Use constraints to spark creativity - Her rigid protocol (chronological order, same space, white background) creates consistency that lets individual stories shine through differences
- Turn rejection into motivation - When Penguin initially rejected her book idea, Paula used it as fuel to create more work rather than waiting for permission
- Self-fund your passion projects strategically - Paula found creative ways to fund her project through book advances, commissions, and combining personal work with business travel
- Question without judgment - Her work allows her to ask intimate questions about people's lives through objects that would be impossible in normal social interactions
- Preserve cultural wisdom - Her focus on indigenous communities recognizes that traditional ways of living hold valuable knowledge that deserves documentation and respect
Daring Creativity. Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic
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