Anastasia Samoylova

Anastasia Samoylova is a Russian-born photographer based in the United States. She received an MA from Russian State University for the Humanities, and an MFA from Bradley University. Samoylova has exhibited internationally, including Aperture Foundation in New York, Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston, Brussels Photography Festival in Belgium, and Pingyao International Photography Festival in China. Her work is included in the collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and ArtSlant Prize collection in Paris. In 2015 she was granted an artist residency at Latitude Chicago. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker and Foam magazines. Her first monograph, Landscape Sublime, was published by the In the In-Between Editions in June 2016.

Artist statement

My work explores the ways in which photography is used to illustrate concepts of the Beautiful and the Natural in contemporary visual culture. Through my practice I examine photographic typologies of landscapes culled from stock and public domain image libraries online. My research focuses on widely circulated nature-themed images that depict such cultural constructs as Nature, Environment, and Beauty, the concepts that ultimately illustrate our worldview. Each of my tableaus is an aestheticized environment constructed out of idealized landscape pictures that manifest the conventional views of the Beautiful in nature. By investigating the formal aspects of such depictions, I aim to challenge the traditional notions of the Beautiful and the Sublime in the age of lens- and screen- mediated environments.

Anastasia Samoylova's work appears courtesy the artist.