Anastasia Samoylova is the First Commissioned Artist of Season Five
Gatorama, 2020
Over the past few years, Anastasia Samoylova has been photographing Florida “intensively and extensively, from the Keys to the state borders with Alabama and Georgia.” She explains, “It is a stark place, culturally, politically, economically, climatically, and it wears this starkness quite visibly. It is there in the fragile landscapes, in the precarious tourist industry, in the boom and bust of its cities, and on the faces of its diverse citizens.”
Anastasia makes photographs on wandering road trips, often meeting compelling subjects by chance. In her recent monograph named after the sunshine state, the images are layered with subtle references both to Florida’s complex history, and to the way it has been photographed by others—most notably by Walker Evans. This ongoing project culminates to a nuanced portrait not only of Florida, but of contemporary U.S.A. What is happening in the extremes of our state is happening across the country.
Anastasia is a Miami-based artist and photographer. Investigating notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque, she has exhibited internationally, including at Aperture Foundation in New York; Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston; Suwon Photography Festival in South Korea; and Pingyao International Photography Festival in China. Her work has been included in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the ArtSlant Prize collection in Paris. Her first monograph, Landscape Sublime, was released by In-Between Editions in June 2016. Monographs FloodZone was released by Steidl in 2019, and more recently, Floridas launched in 2022. This year, Anastasia was also shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.
Learn more about the artist on her website here.