Description
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 facades 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 cliches 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 cliche, 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.
Imaginaries in reality photography's role in the visual culture of the city
About the Author
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.
Book Information
ISBN 9783775754804
Author David Campany
Format Hardback
Page Count 168
Imprint Hatje Cantz
Publisher Hatje Cantz
Weight(grams) 1140g
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 facades 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 cliches 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 cliche, 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.
Imaginaries in reality photography's role in the visual culture of the city
About the Author
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.
Book Information
ISBN 9783775754804
Author David Campany
Format Hardback
Page Count 168
Imprint Hatje Cantz
Publisher Hatje Cantz
Weight(grams) 1140g
