Anastasia Samoylova: Image Cities

Text by David Campany, Victoria del Val. A brilliant, perceptive visual study of the increasing integration of the photographic image and the built environment. In the latest series from Anastasia Samoylova, the Russian-born, Miami-based photographer studies the proliferation of photographic images in urban environments across the world. Samoylova observes how, in our neoliberal era of networked economic markets and networked imagery, the global centers of internationalized money and culture are becoming increasingly aligned and similar: "all these cities are moving towards a generic urban landscape of anonymous steel and glass architecture in which homes, offices and storefronts all appear and feel the same. This is a new global order in which old ideas of nationality are at odds with the 21st-century notion of borderless economics and transnational culture. And yet, those older ideas are now deployed as attractive marketing devices, giving the illusion that these cities are somehow still appealing in their uniqueness rooted in the past." Samoylova’s work also points to the role photography plays in creating this ideological gap between branded urban identity and lived reality. Anastasia Samoylova (born 1984) lives and works in Miami, Florida. Her photographs have been shown at museums in Europe and the US. She is the winner of numerous prizes, including the Fundación MAPFRE’s KBr Photo Award (2021).