Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Defying Gravity in Anka Zhuravleva’s Photography

After singing for a rock band, working as a tattooist, and modeling for Playboy, Russian artist Anka Zhuravleva settled behind the lens. Her photography vacillates between a surrealistic and editorial aesthetic, although, it seems, that she cooks up pieces that resonates with both. With soft, painterly yet obscure visuals, the photographer puts forth a collection of imagery that drives the viewer inside a feminine dream world in which girls and women in anachronistic costumes fly and float among sublime, hazy landscapes.

After singing for a rock band, working as a tattooist, and modeling for Playboy, Russian artist Anka Zhuravleva settled behind the lens. Her photography vacillates between a surrealistic and editorial aesthetic, although, it seems, that she cooks up pieces that resonates with both. With soft, painterly yet obscure visuals, the photographer puts forth a collection of imagery that drives the viewer inside a feminine dream world in which girls and women in anachronistic costumes fly and float among sublime, hazy landscapes.

Her latest series, Distorted Gravity, features various women suspended in mid-air. Most are floating above their beds, drifting away from what holds them down to the real world. Some others fly away through their windows, an image reminiscent of Wendy Darling as she flies through her bedroom window in search of her love interest, Peter Pan. It is said that her pieces show similarities to the 1948 portrait photograph of Salvador Dali by Philippe Halsman, titled Dali Atomicus, which perhaps served as an inspiration for her floating subjects.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Intricate portraits created by Jason Chen, a photographer based in Philadelphia, come from multiple images of the same subject. But as the artist weaves them together, in a process he says explores “time, movement, process, and mutation,” a new representation of the individual emerges (and the backdrop that encloses them). And somehow, their humanity remains intact.
Daniel Rueda and Anna Devís, a duo based in Valencia, Spain, travel the world, crafting photographs that use both each other and architecture as characters. Toying with perspective and geometry, each photo the pair publish on their respective Instagram accounts is packed with humor and accompanying text.
Photographer Henrik Isaksson Garnell “sculpts” his imagery with natural elements such as bones and plant matter, manmade objects, digital effects, and electronic ephemera. The result includes his new series “In Treatment,” a meditation on psychotherapy. The work moves between the cerebral and the surreal.
Korean photographer Hansol Choi (aka Rala) creates images that are simultaneously seductive and off-putting, carefully toeing the line between the two in a way that would do Freud proud. In a recent series, a model writhes behind a plant like a deranged Eros with his crimson, smeared lipstick and eyes rolled back in his head. In other pieces, models' hair becomes tangled in branches as they hide from the viewer. Choi's work is sexualized yet voyeuristic and the models' shy body languages makes us uncomfortably aware of our own prying gaze.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List