Anastasia Samoylova - Hatje Cantz

A hardcover copy of the book Image Cities by Anastasia Samoylova, angled on a white surface. The cover features a dark, moody photograph, and the book has a light pink spine with the title, author, and Kbr Photo Award printed in black and white text.

The back cover of a book with a pale pink cover, standing upright on a white surface. It features two paragraphs of black text describing the book's contents. At the bottom are logos for Hatje Cantz and Fundación MAPFRE, along with a barcode and ISBN.

An open photobook with a teal spine displaying a two-page spread. The left page shows a black-and-white photo of a building facade with superimposed reflections of a golden-lit airplane. The right page shows a color photo of a city street scene with a sign for Queen West, scaffolding, and people walking on the sidewalk.

An open book on a white surface displays a two-page photo spread. The left page shows an architectural rendering of a modern brick housing complex with lush green spaces, which is actually a large banner attached to a real construction site. The right page shows a man on a city street holding a large, rippling banner that depicts a rendering of a different modern building at night.

An overhead photograph of an open art book on a white surface. The left page shows a soft-focus, close-up portrait of a woman's face with a blue eye, overlaid with a shadowy silhouette. The right page displays a photographic collage of fragmented portraits, including an older person's hand and another person touching a creased image.

A two-page spread from a book against a white background. On the left page is a black and white photograph of a person in a dark hooded jacket silhouetted against a large advertisement of a woman's face. On the right page is the book's title page, reading Anastasia Samoylova, Image Cities, with a list of contributing authors and essays.

A diptych contrasting architectural design with its final construction. The left image is a double exposure of a hand drawing with a pencil, overlaid with a blue-toned image of a building under construction. The right image shows a crane against a blue sky, lifting large mirrored panels that reflect the blue ocean below.

A low-angle photograph of a massive, yellow industrial building, its facade covered by a semi-transparent scrim that partially obscures the windows and walls beneath. Four red-and-white-topped smokestacks rise from the roof against a blue sky with white clouds. On the sidewalk in the foreground, a single person in a red hat walks past a streetlight, dwarfed by the building's immense scale.

A street photograph, presented on the right side of a white page, shows a bald man in a long black coat from behind. He stands on a sidewalk, holding a newspaper and a white plastic bag, facing a vibrant, weathered pink wall with a barred window and a lone wooden chair resting against it.

A diptych of two surreal photographs on a book spread. On the left, a black-and-white double exposure combines a person's torso with an industrial cityscape featuring a crane. On the right, a geometric architectural shot is overlaid with a diagonal close-up of a person's eye, saturated in a deep red hue.

A diptych of two images. The left image is a street photograph of two women in beige trench coats viewed from behind, one wearing a bright red beret. The right image is an abstract, multi-layered composition that blends a close-up of a person holding a glass with urban architectural details like columns and brickwork.

A two-panel photograph. On the left, a large flock of birds flies through a city with modern glass buildings and bare trees under a grey, overcast sky. On the right, a close-up shows a large banner depicting an angular, modern building with a smaller flock of birds, while a real plant with yellow flowers grows in the foreground.

Anastasia Samoylova

Image Cities

€ 50.00

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Amount

By (artist): Anastasia Samoylova

March 2023, 168 Pages, 100 Photos

Hardcover

246mm x 308mm

ISBN: 978-3-7757-5480-4

HATJE CANTZ VERLAG
Mommsenstr. 27
10629 Berlin
Germany
E-Mail: contact@hatjecantz.de

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Press download

| Reinventing the Image of the Global Metropolis

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.

EXHIBITION
Fundación Mapfre, Madrid, Spain,
February 16-May 14, 2023