I call this photo ‘The Light Bringer’. The kid in the photo is the child of a very good friend of mine. He has a very strange and unique beauty to him. We were just sitting casually in a salad bar, and I guess he was getting kind of bored. The way he was interacting with the objects in the room was incredibly fascinating to me. Everything about his movements seemed so elegant and just so inherently pure. In his gaze and the way in which he was holding the lightbulb, I felt the energy literally vibrating through the entire room. It seemed to float towards him and out of him at the same time.
In the work of Mosbow-born, Munich-based photographer Elizaveta Porodina, images are soaked in the surreal. Time and space become fragmented, stretched and reversed, points of extraction for visceral and entrancing emotion. ‘I found myself on a chemical level with photography,’ she explains. ‘I’ve never thought of it as a medium that has rules. It just became another tentacle for my expression.’
In her photographs, the real and the unreal are blurred together, fragmented, and mirrored. Melancholic symbolism meets vivid colours; dark blacks meet abstractions of light. Her cinematic distortions reflect both the perception of the subject and of herself. Through this practice, each photo becomes, in a sense, a self-portrait. ‘There is a temptation to assume that there is only one reality – one that is identical to our individual perception. I think society pushes us to really believe that, too. For me, photography is a way of reframing and getting outside of my own perception, a way of seeing all the other ways you can interpret life and reality.’
Reality and all its many fragments are the subject of the artist’s latest show at Fotografiska Berlin. A trained clinical psychologist, Porodina is fascinated by emotionally driven behaviour. In Un/Masked, her photographs hold a mirror to the contradictions of the human condition – a contemplation on how each human is their own universe yearning for a connection with others.
Outside of her professional work, Porodina has an Instagram alter-ego, @atevazile_anidorop, where she posts her more personal work. It is her way of keeping a diary, she tells me, a flow of visual consciousness. It is a page for when she sees something beautiful, captivating, sad, touching, or emotional; moments that she would like to remember. ‘We are always yearning for a miracle, some sort of magic in life,’ she says. ‘But with photography, I’m constantly reminded that life is already very magical.’ Porodina has agreed to share eight photographs from this personal archive with SLEEK.
This is an image of my friend and also muse, Aiko [Blumer], a musician and artist. She is very admirable in her beauty, strength, intelligence, and talent. This moment was captured in New York around a year and half ago. I was opening my exhibition in Fotografiska New York and a lot of my friends decided to come with me. Aiko was a big part of the exhibition as she wrote a lot of music for the different parts of the show. We spent the entire trip together, and capturing her in New York felt really special.
This is another image of me and my cat, where you can see only my face and her green and yellow eyes. I felt there was something quite film noir about this one. I think black cats are a very special breed of cat, there’s something mischievous and devilish about them.
This is another image of me and my cat, where you can see only my face and her green and yellow eyes. I felt there was something quite film noir about this one. I think black cats are a very special breed of cat, there’s something mischievous and devilish about them.
The next two images feature me and my cat, captured very candidly in the morning. My husband and I have a ritual with the cat. She spends the entire night with us and then, in the morning, she lays with her entire weight on my body – half trying to get some love, half trying to choke me [laughs]. So, this is one of those images of us together.
This photo is a self-portrait of me and some goldfish, captured by my husband, Josef, when we were visiting an art exhibition in Tokyo. I particularly love this image because it shows me in direct connection with animals. Animals play a huge role in the work of my alter ego, @atevazile_anidorop. I have a never-ending love for all living beings.
This image of friend and muse Michelle Laff was captured in Turkey two years ago. We spent time together on holiday and, since we are both obsessed with photography, we were snapping pictures pretty much everywhere. The foot belongs to my husband, Josef.
This self-portrait shot between mirrors is called ‘Unreality’. Or maybe ‘Reality’... I don’t remember anymore [laughs]. It was shot in the kitchen very candidly, where I was experimenting with incorporating jewellery into my work. I’m obsessed with jewellery; I collect it from all over the world. And I particularly like jewellery that plays with surrealist elements, like built-in mirrors, parts of human anatomy, or flora and fauna. This piece shows two mirrors at the same time, which was fun to play around with. For me, this photo represents the multitude of different possibilities of interpreting one's reality.
Last Chance to see UN/MASKED at Fotografiska Berlin until 18/08/2024.
As featured in SLEEK 81 – REALITY. Available in print and digital here.