Image Cities: Anastasia Samoylova
© Anastasia Samoylova, Art Poster (Warhol), Los Angeles, 2022
Written and Photo Edited by Joe Cuccio
Anastasia Samoylova is a world-renowned artist who uses photography to make commentary on hard-pressing issues centered on politics and climate change. She has contributed many impactful books centering around how humanity is affecting the world we inhabit and her newest release Image Cities is aligned with this sentiment. Throughout this book, the artist travels all across the world to major cities like Tokyo, Moscow, New York, Madrid, and London to see the collages that exist in these lived-in environments. All along the way she uses her understanding of collage and her camera to create an idea of how global capitalism has shifted our vision of these cities. Advertisements have been pasted throughout each urban area to show eminent change for the better, but leave both inhabitants and viewers confused on what is real and what is a fallacy. Samoylova connects each city with her ability to show how real-estate billboards, lifestyle ads, and hyper-photographic architecture have shifted city areas into fantasy lands showing non-stop alterations.
Samoylova deploys several visual strategies to engage with the objects and advertisements found in the urban environment. She engages with the people, nature, and architectural structures within these built-up environments while remaining attentive to the commercialism that surrounds these cities. Her images condense the spaces that may exist between the advertisements and the quotidian details all around the city. People are seen interacting with these confusing spaces eliciting a feeling that they are transported from the streets of these large metropolitan areas into alternative spaces, or, an alleged past or future referring to what that space is or could be. Natural elements that are seldom found in these urban environments are juxtaposed with overtly artificial signs. When we see other images she uses of billboards that depict nature we are confused as to what is real and what is a fallacy. Samoylova forces the viewer to look deeply to decipher where the elements of advertisement end and the reality of the urban area creeps in.
© Anastasia Samoylova, Construction Fence (Tecnologia), Madrid, 2022.
David Campany interjects commentary on both the amazing work that Samoylova has done through this work and how previous projects have influenced how these images are made. Campany discusses Samoylova’s roots in collage art and how that has helped her develop her visual language. The collage works she has done in the past have helped her compose images in the real world by allowing for attention to layering and revealing portions of the image. Samoylova has a keen attention to detail which allows her to take a layered scene and present it as an illusion of one coherent or constructed piece. The line between what exists in the confines of these cities and what is simply a billboard or poster is obscured. Some images incorporate reflections of the urban environment existing within the walls of advertisements, revealing to the viewer what space these commercialized objects exist within.
© Anastasia Samoylova, Female Lead, Times Square, 2022
Samoylova also brings attention to how consumer-driven ideals have affected the spaces we inhabit. The images in cities are so much more than simple street images and reveal to the viewer that these built environments are constantly attempting to sell us a new product or new depictions of reality. She produces imagery that points to how advertising has overrun cities throughout the world, leaving its residents existing in a fantasy world.
© Anastasia Samoylova, Peeling Poster, Los Angeles, 2022.
