Kozva Rigaud

Meet The Entrepreneur:

8 July 2026

Meet The Entrepreneur:

Kozva Rigaud

8 July 2026

Q: You built Shotview Agency over twenty years ago, in an industry that hasn't always made space for women at the top. How has being a woman been perceived in this industry, and how has the industry itself changed since you started?

A: When I started, the industry was run mostly by men, the clients, the creative directors, the agency heads. For me it was a global thing from the very beginning. I could not commit to working with just one market. I always saw the industry as a global project, even when everything was divided.

While many of my colleagues based in Germany were working mostly for German brands, we were very conceptual, so our market was always outside of the German-speaking countries. You cannot imagine how hard it was, and how many times I was traveling between continents and countries to place my artists and my vision.

I am a very curious person and that curiosity has always driven me towards innovation, new tendencies and unexpected places. At the time I founded the agency, that kind of curiosity was not the norm.. But it brought me to situations and opportunities that a more conventional path never would have.

Also because of my background, coming from Latin America, I was always looking for the fans of the artists rather than just working within the market.

As a woman, I can imagine that for many people, there was little belief this was going to be a long ride. I am sure I was underestimated at the beginning. And honestly? I used that to my advantage. People who underestimate you stop watching you carefully, and that is when you build.

Q: When you choose who to represent, what are you looking for? What qualities matter to you?

A: Talent is the starting point, but it is never enough on its own. What I look for is a point of view. I want to see a photographer or artist and immediately understand how they see the world, not just what they shoot, but why. That specificity, that obsession with a particular way of looking, is what makes an artist irreplaceable.

I also look for hunger. Not desperation, hunger. The kind of person who is never quite satisfied with their last work, who wakes up thinking about the next one. Those are the people I want to build something with.

And I look for character. Because I represent human beings, not portfolios. When things get complicated, and they always do, I need to know who I am dealing with.

Q: What does good storytelling look like to you, and what makes a good work really good? Could you give an example of one successful commercial campaign you think got it exactly right?

A: Good storytelling in commercial or commissioned photography is when you forget you are looking at an advertisement. When the image has enough humanity, enough tension, enough beauty that it exists beyond its brief. The product becomes secondary to the feeling, and yet somehow the feeling sells the product better than any product shot ever could.

There are many campaigns we did that showed exactly these emotions and not the product ,but I would prefer not to mention any specifically, because all our clients and artists are great. There is no better or worse.

"Talent is the starting point, but it is never enough on its own. What I look for is a point of view. I want to see a photographer or artist and immediately understand how they see the world, not just what they shoot, but why."

Q: Top three photographers and your favourite photograph from each, and why?

A: This is a question I am always asked and always resist answering because there are so many great photographers I admire. From our agency, all of them.

Henri Cartier-Bresson : when I was first introduced to photography, he was the one who inspired me. A French photographer and filmmaker, widely known as the pioneer of street photography. That endless love for real moments, emotions and aesthetics, he captured life as it was happening, without interference. That honesty in image-making has never left me.

Richard Avedon. : one of the best photographers for combining high creative photography with commercial work. From the beginning of his career, Avedon made formal portraits for publication in Theatre Arts, Life, Look and Harper's Bazaar, among many others. He was fascinated by photography's capacity for suggesting personality and evoking the life of his subjects. He registered poses, attitudes, hairstyles, clothing and accessories as vital, revelatory elements of an image. He had complete confidence in the two-dimensional nature of photography , the rules of which he bent to his stylistic and narrative purposes. As he wryly said - that’s very honest! : "My photographs don't go below the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues." Avedon is widely credited with erasing the line between art and commercial photography and that is something I have always believed in deeply.

Philip-Lorca di Corcia. a photographer who has always fascinated me for his extraordinary ability to transform everyday life into something cinematic. His work is meticulously controlled and yet feels completely real, that tension between the staged and the spontaneous is what makes him unique. From intimate portraits of family and friends to street hustlers and anonymous strangers caught in public spaces, he brings the same precision and dramatic light to every subject. That cinematic quality, the way he uses light the way a film director would., creates images that feel like stills from a movie that never existed. Powerful, unsettling and completely unforgettable.

And another one, who I don't want not to mention:

Martín Chambi was a pioneering Indigenous Peruvian photographer renowned for his striking black-and-white images of Andean communities, Inca architecture, and Peruvian society. His legacy is celebrated for capturing the depth and dignity of Peru's diverse population during the 20th century, his images are stunning!

Q: You came to Berlin and stayed. What has this city given you that shaped both you and the agency, and what is it still lacking?

Berlin gave me permission to reinvent myself. That sounds like a cliché until you have actually lived it. This city does not care who you were before you arrived. It only asks what you are building now. For someone who came from Lima via Salzburg and New York and Vienna, someone who was always arriving somewhere new, that was an extraordinary gift.

What Berlin gave Shotview specifically is an aesthetic. A seriousness about image-making, a refusal of the decorative for its own sake, a hunger for work that means something. That is in the DNA of this city and it is in the DNA of the agency.

The artists we represent are highly innovative and build markets. I consider myself and my family as "family builders" and that is exactly how I feel about being in Berlin. This city builds you, if you let it.

But to be completely honest with you, I love to be outside. For the past two years I have been living between Berlin and Paris, and that connection is very strong. Two cities that could not be more different, and yet together they make complete sense to me.

What is still missing? Warmth. Berlin is brilliant and cold. The human temperature of Lima, the elegance of Vienna, the generosity of Paris, the speed and energy of New York, Berlin makes you work for connection in a way that the other cities do not. I have made my peace with it. But I notice it every time I land back from somewhere else.

Q: Where do you go in Berlin when you want to switch off?

A: The Neue Nationalgalerie is always deeply inspiring for me, a great source of inspiration and a place where I can completely lose track of time but also all amazing galleries .

I also love walking along the canal. Berlin has so many great restaurants, the food scene here is endlessly surprising and constantly evolving.

But if I am truly honest about where I switch off? A long, unhurried dinner with people I love. That is where I truly disconnect, not in silence but in good conversation and something delicious on the table. That combination, for me, is everything.