Photography Hatje Cantz Verlag | Anastasia Samoylova

Image Cities Takes Us On A Journey Through Cities The Globalization And World Cities Research Network Ranks Highest According To Their Degree Of “Global Interconnectedness.” We Find Them In A Process Of Transformation Concealed Behind Dummy Façades Onto Which A Sense Of Heightened Anticipation Has Been Projected. It Would Be Tempting To Read These Photographs As A Polemic Against The Triumph Of Consumerism And A Slowly Numbing Global Visual-Economic Order That Wraps Itself Around Whatever Once Felt Local And Civic. Samoylova’S Photography Is Full Of Masterful Refinements Of The Existing Clichés Of Urban Photography: Citizens Dwarfed By Giant Images. Faces And Bodies Refracted Through Glass. The Pop-Cubism Of Visual Bricolage. The Minuscule Human Figures That Stroll Seemingly Indifferent Through City Space While Being At Least Partly Somewhere Else In Their Imaginations― Their Existence Already A Collage Of Places And Times. Yet, Samoylova Consciously Engages With Cliché, Takes It Apart And Reassembles It, Gambling That It Can Be Taken To A Level Of Pictorial Sophistication That Eludes Any Simple Argument Or Statement. Instead, She Invites Us To Reflect On Photography’S Role In The Creation Of A Gap Between These Citie’S Brand Identity And Their Everyday Reality.

Anastasia Samoylova (*1984) Grew Up In Moscow. In 2008 She Moved To The United States, Where She Graduated With A Master’S Degree In Interdisciplinary Art From Bradley University, Illinois. Her Work Explores The Tension Between The Staged Perception Of A Bombastic Materialism And Reality. Living And Working In Miami, Florida Has Become The Backdrop For Her Combination Of Collage-Like Details With The Genre Of The Road Trip. Her Recent Series Flood Zones And Floridas Have Received Great Critical Acclaim.