Anastasia Samoylova

A book delves into the contradictions of the stereotypical southern state by Walker Evans and Anastasia Samoylova, two long-distance authors who delve into the idiosyncrasies of the place.

The Madrid gallery Sabrina Amrani inaugurates the photography exhibition 'Floridas'. Images of the south of the United States that once again question the economic crisis and racial divisions, under the indifferent gaze of politics.

Russian-American artist Anastasia Samoylova documents the aftermath of rising sea levels in South Florida, challenging the way we think about climate change. The project is now on show at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Virginia, until May 29, 2022.

Anastasia Samoylova’s “FloodZone” photos at the HistoryMiami museum capture an often surreal visual interplay of flora, fauna and crumbling concrete. 

Floodzone, an ongoing series by Anastasia Samoylova, stirringly acknowledges that the climate crisis is already upon us, however earnestly we might resist this fact.

Don’t Look Up zooms out on a stellar scale; FloodZone: Photographs by Anastasia Samoylova zooms in to hyperlocal effects of sea level rise, tidal flooding and shoreline erosion in Florida. But the exhibition – at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia – takes aim at the same human flaw of cognitive dissonance.

The jury of the first edition of the "KBrPhoto Award" has unanimously decided to award the prize to Anastasia Samoylova and her project Images Cities, for the quality and originality of her work.

FloodZone is an exhibition of an expansive and ongoing photographic series by Anastasia Samoylova, responding to the environmental changes in coastal cities of South Florida. By playing self-consciously with the familiar motifs and palette of the region, the photographs work as complex allegories. There are aerial photographs of the saturated topography; portraits of locals; and close-up observations of buildings, flora, and fauna. Samoylova’s images provide a broad yet acute perspective on what it feels like to live in at-risk areas while economic forces instill a sense of denial and disavowal.

The MBAL invited the Russian-born artist Anastasia Samoylova to create a new installation for the museum’s facade. Her mural piece evokes the Grand Canyon against the backdrop of climate change. For several years the artist, who now lives in the United States, has been creating monumental installations in parallel with her practice as a documentary photographer. Grand Canyons, created in 2021, is part of the Landscape Sublime series begun in 2013. In the series the artist explores the way in which images from social networks respond to popular pictorial motifs and illustrate a certain idea of nature and environment. To create her collages, Samoylova collects royalty-free images from the Internet and re-photographs them in the form of cubist paintings.

I was originally trained in environmental design and painting and only came to photography later. My main influences are the “Amazons” of the Russian Avant-Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova. About a year into working on Landscape Sublime I realised how my cubist compositions were really a contemporary version of constructivism, the semi-abstract kaleidoscopic tableau reflective of the time as tumultuous as it was during those artists’ lives.

One of the first things Samoylova began to notice was the dissonance between the city’s booming real estate market and the reality of the ocean’s rising water levels, making their way toward the very places being developed. These photos explore how rising sea levels are affecting Miami.

When a hurricane approaches, the air tingles. The sea does strange things. In minutes, the sky can turn from azure blue to slate gray. Turbulence comes out of nowhere. You can picture what follows, and many photographers do, but you will find no images of catastrophe in Anastasia Samoylova’s “FloodZone.”

Anastasia Samoylova’s seductive and lyrical images exploit a tension between the image of Florida as a glamorous tropical paradise and the ominous reality of a state threatened by rising sea levels and ever more frequent hurricanes. Her layered photographs focus on the small but significant details of life in an urban environment experiencing profound climatic changes.

“The land is becoming increasingly unstable. Profound changes are already happening, and there are more to come,” says Samoylova, referencing the rising sea levels, hurricanes and major storm surges affecting the area.