Now living in Miami, Florida, Anastasia Samoylova was born and raised in Moscow and started attending several artistic residencies in the United States. Her work explores issues related to the environment, the picturesque and consumption.
At the crossroads of digital tools, amateur photography and sculpture, her series Landscapes Sublime reinterprets landscapes. Oscillating between 2D and 3D, her constructions of panoramas are made of her own pictures, and images found on the Internet. The artist prints them and use them to create scale models she then turns back into 2D by capturing it on camera. This work on colour and collective memory reveals the beauty of those imaginary places based on real landscapes while reminding us of cubism and constructivism. “Reality is a construction and, through photography, I can bend time and space in one single image”, the artist explains. “When you gaze at a landscape, and you capture it, you turn it into something flat and small. I try to bring it back to life, to take advantage of it and to push it in a place where it is, once again, thinkable”
Through the series Breakfast With – from which our cover was taken – Anastasia pays a tribute to the photographers who influenced her, by making up imaginary encounters around a breakfast. A way for her to reflect on the way images enter her life and shape physical and mental space. “Sometimes, taking a picture is a way to really get to know it”, she concludes.
© Anastasia Samoylova
Vidéo © Nina Peyrachon