NEWSLETTER
Samoylova’s body of work FloodZone explores life in the southern United States when rising sea levels and hurricanes threaten the most prized locations
Rochester, N.Y. — The major exhibition Anastasia Samoylova: FloodZone is now open in the main galleries of the George Eastman Museum .Anastasia Samoylova’s photographs are deceptive, drawing us in with the promise of luxurious paradise then revealing a crumbling landscape that nature promises to reclaim. Yet this is what it is to live at the edge of climate change, as rising sea levels and hurricanes threaten the very spaces that are so prized. In her series FloodZone, Samoylova (American, b. Soviet Union, b. 1984) focuses on the southern United States, where the sought-after tropical climate drives the real estate market to continue to build upon land that is known to be slipping into the ocean.
In 2016, Anastasia Samoylova moved to Miami, Florida. As she familiarized herself with the city through photography, a larger story began to unfold. The resulting body of work explores what it looks like to live in the southern United States at a time when rising sea levels and hurricanes threaten the most prized locations with storm surges and coastal erosion.
Samoylova’s images are seductive and eerie. Their alluring color palette—lush greens, azure blues, and pastel pinks—gives way to minute details of decay: palm trees toppled over into a building, the patina of constant moisture eroding a freeway overpass, the boarded-up windows of a hotel after it has weathered another storm. The landscape in her work is riddled with advertisements promising a utopian dream, where swimming pools overlook the ocean, where everyone is tan and chiseled, and where nature is manicured. Somewhere between the artifice and the sobering reality lies the melancholy of life in the time of climate change.
The exhibition will be on display through December 18 and includes more than 60 photographs from Samoylova’s FloodZone project with additional photographs from the Eastman Museum collection selected collaboratively by the curator and artist.
Anastasia Samoylova has published two book, FloodZone (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2019), and Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova, Walker Evans (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2022). Both books are available in the George Eastman Museum shop.
Samoylova holds an MFA in interdisciplinary visual arts from Bradley University (2011) and an MA in environmental design from the Russian State University of Humanities in Moscow (2007). Her work has been displayed in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.
Generously sponsored by the Rubens Family Foundation. Support of the production of the photographs for this exhibition was provided by HistoryMiami Museum and the Chrysler Museum.
About the George Eastman Museum
Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States, located on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 28,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active bookpublishing program, and its L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation’s graduate program (a collaboration with the University of Rochester) makes critical contributions to film preservation. For more information, visit eastman.org.
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PRESS IMAGES available at the following URL:
https://eastmanmuseum.app.box.com/folder/165539211332?s=e1qx4ac8j4cszxawq3ylxxx1kugjdgs0
Media Contact: Eliza Kozlowski
(585) 327-4860
ekozlowski@eastman.org