Anastasia Samoylova 1984

Lives in Miami. Works in Miami.

Represented by:

Galerie Caroline O'Breen

Anastasia Samoylova is a Russian-born American photographer who moves between observational photography, studio practice and installation. Her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque. Her two monographs, FloodZone and Floridas, were published by Steidl in 2019 and 2022. In 2022 Samoylova was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and will present an extensive solo exhibition at the Eastman Museum.
FloodZone is Anastasia Samoylova’s photographic account of life on the climatic knife-edge of the southern United States. It is an expansive photographic project that began in 2016 reflecting and responding to the problem of rising sea levels through a striking case study of Miami. The series Floridas is a follow-up on FloodZone — a layered portrait of the state of Florida that also covers touches on social and economic subjects. Floridas establishes a dialogue with the oeuvre of Walker Evans, employing a language similar to his detached and laconic imagery.
Samoylova's earlier body of work, Landscape Sublime, explores how social-media images and the repetition of certain motifs informed an understanding of natural phenomena.

Artworks

Media

Highlights

Recommendations

Collections

Shows

Market position

Artworks by Anastasia Samoylova

Reflection, Lake Placid

2020

€ 6.500

Car Reflection, Miami Beach

Chain Link Fence, Miami

Media

History Miami Museum 2021-2022

Highlights

Staircase at King Tide, Hollywood, Florida

Coming Waters - A. Samoylova / Oasis - M. Litt

2019

About

Review of 'Floridas'

Sleek, delectable renderings of colour which magically transcribe that distinctly brilliant Floridian light. However, what’s alluring is also alarming, for they convey the contradictory lives of a state totally distracted by its own self-image whilst in the throes of ecological implosion. Though these layered photographs contain subtle references to Walker Evans’ extensive but oft-overlooked body of work made in “Sunshine State” – a kinship teased out in Floridas (2022), her exceptional new book which is available to peruse here – Samoyolova is very much her own artist. Her merging of meticulous observation, deceptive aesthetic and sharp socio-environmental concern marks her out as one of the most intelligent and sophisticated photographers working today – and, indeed, one of the most important to reckon with the fallacies of Florida.

Alex Merola

Florida under water

Photographer Anastasia Samoylova shows the devastating effect this has on her hometown of Miami. She doesn't do that with classic disaster photos. She could take that enough if another hurricane hit the peninsula. But for Samoylova no clichés; her photos are more subtle. She shows the fragility of the idea of a paradise place by the sea, the essence of Florida. It presents the kind of pretty pictures with which the state attracts hordes of retirees and millions of tourists: palm trees, colorful houses, cozy boutiques and luxury apartments. But with Samoylova it becomes surreal, at times uncanny.

Jeroen Bos - Het Financieele Dagblad

From Art Papers

Samoylova’s work is decidedly not disaster photography. Rather, it depicts and even participates in a much more complex relationship between the natural world and human society. <...> FloodZone emphasizes the brief liminality of the slow disaster of climate change. It responds to the need for visual testimonies while they are still possible, as each hurricane’s storm surge reaches a bit closer to the front door, but before it overtakes us entirely.

Danny Olda

From The New Yorker

One can try to avoid the clichés, or one can push through them and emerge on the other side. This seems to be Samoylova’s approach. Her task is first to understand the seductive contradiction of a place drowning in its own mythical images as it also drowns in water. She knows what this place looks like, and knows the Faustian pact it has made with its own image. She looks at both unblinkingly.

David Campany

From The Washington Post

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.

Kenneth Dickerman

From ARTFORUM

With her extensive, multiyear photo series “FloodZone,” Samoylova homes in on the effects of rising sea levels in the southern United States and renders our climate crisis as something gradual, inconspicuous—a creeping and lethal menace that can feel deceptively ordinary. Akin to Didion’s exacting prose, Samoylova’s incisive visual poetry marries documentary to anxious premonitions, montaging mirage with somber reality. The buoyant tropical pinks that appear throughout the series declare the hubris of a place which overwhelmingly denies its own sinking fate. 'Roots' shows a fully deracinated tree miraculously standing, its tendril-like roots grasping sandy soil for balance, while 'Camouflage' (both 2017) presents a sidelong image of a lush yet faux tropical forest—reproduced on a tarp and wrapped around a stack of plywood—standing before a chain-link fence. “FloodZone” calls attention to the facades and contradictions of the submerging subtropics that are, to borrow poet Stevie Smith’s turn of phrase, “not waving but drowning".

Heather Diack

Trouble in Paradise

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.

Kate Neave

Shows

Art Rotterdam 2022

Bart Lunenburg, Anastasia Samoylova, Satijn Panyigay

19 may - 22 may 2022, Rotterdam, Nederland

Paris Photo 2021

Anastasia Samoylova

11 nov - 14 nov 2021, Paris, France

Unseen 2021

Margaret Lansink, Elsa Leydier, Anastasia Samoylova

16 sep - 19 sep 2021, Amsterdam, Nederland

Coming Waters - A. Samoylova / Oasis - M. Litt

Matthieu Litt, Anastasia Samoylova

25 feb - 10 apr 2021, Amsterdam, Nederland

FloodZone

Anastasia Samoylova

6 mar - 16 may 2020, Amsterdam, Nederland

PAN Amsterdam

Maura Biava, Sofie Knijff, Laurence Aëgerter, Anastasia Samoylova, Satijn Panyigay

23 nov - 1 dec 2019, Amsterdam, Nederland

In museum collection:

Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (DE)

MoCP (Museum of Contemporary Photography)

Pérez Art Museum Miami

In corporate collection:

University of Miami Art Collection, USA

ArtSlant Collection, France

Yale University Book Collection, USA

Stanford University Book Collection, USA

Mount Sinai Medical Center Collection

Boston Consulting Group Collection

Market position

Most recent exhibitions include Kunst Haus Wien; Chrysler Museum of Art, HistoryMiami Museum; Kunsthalle Mannheim, and Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle. In 2022 Samoylova was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and will present an extensive solo exhibition at the Eastman Museum. Her work is in the collections at the Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, and Wilhelm-Hack Museum, among others. Her two monographs, FloodZone and Floridas, were published by Steidl in 2019 and 2022.
Other exhibitions include a.o. The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk; HistoryMiami Museum; The Print Center, Philadelphia; Orlando Museum of Art;USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa; Kunsthal Helmond, the Netherlands; Biennale für Aktuelle Fotografie, Mannheim; the Aperture Foundation, New York; the Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston; at festivals in Brazil, Belgium, France, Holland, China, South Korea and Germany. Samoylova's work has been published in a.o. The Guardian, FD Persoonlijk, British Journal of Photography, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, De Volkskrant, Het Parool, PhotoVogue, FOAM, Art Press, Monopol, Photograph Mag and Artforum. She has completed a number of artist residencies including Mass MoCA, Prairie Center for the Arts, Latitude Chicago and ArtCenter South Florida.

CV