Troubled Paradise

Artist Anastasia Samoylova and writer, curator, artist, and educator David Campany discuss Floridas, their latest publication bringing together photographs by Samoylova and Walker Evans of America’s most complex and misunderstood state.

 

Anastasia Samoylova

Anastasia is a Russian-born American artist who moves between observational photography and studio practice. Her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque. Recent exhibitions include The Saatchi Gallery, London; Kunst Haus Wien, Austria; HistoryMiami Museum, USA; Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany; and Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland. In 2022 Samoylova was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and will present an extensive solo exhibition at the Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. Her books Floridas and FloodZone were published by Steidl in 2022 and 2019. Her work is in the collections at the Perez Art Museum Miami and Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, among others. 

 

 

 

David Campany

David is the curator of over thirty exhibitions worldwide and the author of over twenty books, including On Photographs 2020, So Present, So Invisible 2019, A Handful of Dust 2015, The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip 2014, Walker Evans: the magazine work 2013, Jeff Wall: Picture for Women 2011, Photography and Cinema 2008, and Art and Photography 2003. Forthcoming titles include Indeterminacy: thoughts on time, the image and race(ism), co-written with Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, and Victor Burgin’s Photopath, both 2022.  His latest curatorial project, William Klein: Yes –  Photographs, Paintings, Films 1948-2013, opens at the International Center of Photography, New York on June 3. He works as an editor with various photographers on their books, most recently Mark Neville’s Stop Tanks With Books 2022, and Anastasia Samoylova’s FloodZone 2019 and Floridas 2022. He teaches at the University of Westminster, London.