Elizaveta Porodina: Un/Masked

by Nadine Barth  (Editor), Elizaveta Porodina (Photographer), Fabien Baron (Contributor)

In childhood, Russian-German photographer Elizaveta Porodina’s image repertoire predominantly consisted of Moscow’s brutalist buildings and the art her mother introduced to her at home. This imagery coalesced and imprinted upon her subconscious, forging an enduring fascination with darkly romantic aesthetics. Porodina’s later transition from clinical psychologist to photographer was intuitive; both fields involve a commitment to understanding emotional behavior. By showing rather than telling, photography offered Porodina another pathway to the subconscious mind.

Un/Masked is the artist’s first book and features text by art director and editor Fabien Baron. The extensive selection of Porodina’s experimental fashion and fine art photography showcases her uncanny ability to extract the underlying emotions in her entrancing productions. She plays with melancholic symbolism―establishing associations that are sometimes ambiguous, other times stark in their clarity―through cinematic and documentary-style imagery. Whether in dramatic black and white or vividly colored artworks, the photographer dramatically “unmasks” her subjects―which is to say, herself―time and time again.

Hardcover, 160 pages.