Dominique Di Crisci: Documentary Storytelling, Horses, and the Spirit of Movement

At Makara Wear, we celebrate women who move through the world with freedom, creativity, and a deep connection to nature. In this interview, we speak with visual storyteller Dominique Di Crisci, whose documentary-driven photography captures the raw, honest moments between movement, emotion, and place. From desert horse riding to ocean-inspired imagery, Dominique shares her creative journey, the philosophy behind her project RIDE w/me, and the story behind our unique collaboration.

Can you tell us about your creative journey — how you began and what led you to focus on documentary-driven visual storytelling and photography? 

For a long time, I thought I’d become a war photographer. I was drawn to raw emotions, to moments that mattered, to the idea that a single image can shift perception. 

I didn’t go to war. I went into advertising. 

Over 15 years I built concepts, framed stories, and learned how images carry meaning.

Today, my work sits right at that intersection: bringing real emotion and documentary depth into brand storytelling.

Your work consistently blends documentary aesthetics with lifestyle and brand storytelling. What draws you to this style of visual narrative? 

Brands today don’t need louder images. They need images that feel real, rooted, and human. Documentary gives depth, lifestyle gives accessibility through aesthetics. When both meet, images stop trying to impress and start to resonate.

What have been some of the most meaningful or formative projects in your career so far, and why? 

The projects that shaped me most didn’t happen in studios or on sets. They happened in controversial settings like Cuba, Colombia and Sinai, where I worked with natural light, unpredictable conditions and a little chaos. I could navigate them only with trust, presence, and cultural sensitivity.

Everything I know about authenticity I learned through riding and working with horses for over 30 years. You can’t fake energy with them, they mirror you instantly.

With my camera, I try to be that mirror.

How do you define the emotional or energetic “essence” you aim to capture in your work? 

Movement strips things down. I capture people just before and after the obvious.

A freediver before a deep dive.

A kitesurfer seconds away from takeoff.

A rider in quiet conversation with a horse.There’s no room for pretending when you’re out of breath, nervous, euphoric, or deeply focused. The body tells the truth long before words catch up.

That’s the essence I capture: the fragile sensitivity in-between. 

With RIDE w/me, you move beyond photography into experience design. What inspired you to create this project?

I've been with Arabian horses for more than thirty years, exploring liberty work and learning their language and behaviour. Along the way, these children of the wind taught me something quite simple: to fully express their true nature, they need space. And so do I.

That insight led me to the desert, where I created the concept of RIDE w/me. It's about sharing that sense of freedom and a different way of travel through immersive desert horse riding experiences and retreats for women. Intimate. Dusty. And yes – it's a whole aesthetic.

Your visual storytelling feels deeply connected to place and movement. How do Makara Wear pieces support or enhance that sense of place and motion in your imagery?

Makara Wear designs feel like a second skin, and that changes everything. When you feel at ease and confident in what you’re wearing, you stop adjusting and start moving instinctively. The body relaxes, movement becomes honest and you respond more naturally to the place you’re in. That’s when images feel alive.

Can you share a moment from our collaboration with Makara Wear that felt particularly inspiring or transformative?

Fashion and Horses was a long-term obsession waiting for the right partner to jump the fence. When we both met, Gerda, I knew this is it. Plot twist: we had lunch together the day before the shoot and both got food poisoning. We shot anyway. Slightly green, wildly committed and the results were nothing short of magic. That’s when I knew we were onto something rare. 

We’re planning a retreat together – what excites you most about this collaboration, and what do you hope participants will experience and take away?

What excites me most is the mix of worlds.

Bringing movement, horses, freediving, and fashion into one shared space feels wild. The retreat is about slowing down enough to feel again. We want women to be inspired and to leave with a deeper sense of themselves: grounded, connected, and a little less polished.

More to find out about Dominique press here and her project RIDE w/me here.