For the latest edition of Format Picks, our monthly contest, we asked artists to submit images themed around the environment. We received hundreds of submissions focused on themes like climate change and urbanization, and also many that simply explored nature and how art can discuss our relationship to it.
Our May contest winners are photographers Anastasia Samoylova and Evangelia Aktipi. Aktipi won the Audience Choice award with her photo exploring smartphone use and the environment, and we selected Samoylova as a winner for her stunning image of flooding in the United States. Both winners will receive a $250 grant towards their creative work.
Format Picks is an ongoing project in which we ask artists to submit work around a different monthly theme for a chance to win a prize and publication in the magazine. Entry is always free and open to anyone. Last month, our winners were Amritha Vadi and Patricio Josse, who interpreted the theme of the city with unique portraits of Hong Kong and New York.
Anastasia Samoylova
About the artist:
Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984) is a multimedia artist living and working in Miami. She received an MFA from Bradley University and an MA from Russian State University for the Humanities. Her work addresses notions of environmentalism, consumerism, and the picturesque. Samoylova has exhibited internationally, including Aperture Foundation in New York, Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston, State University of New York Geneseo, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Vanderbilt University, The Southern Gallery, Purdue University and in festivals in Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, South Korea and China.
About the work:
“Flood Zone is grounded in my longstanding attention to the differences between natural versus constructed landscapes, and to the role that photographs play in constructing collective memories and imagined geographies.
“Focusing first on the American South and increasingly on the East Coast—with the ultimate goal of documenting fifty communities at high risk of rising tides in Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas—the project goes beyond the familiar types of images produced in the aftermath of hurricanes and massive flooding.
“Mixing modes of representation that range from lyrical documentary photographs to images that challenge Southern clichés to metaphoric, allegorical, and constructed photographs—Flood Zone aims to manifest the precarious psychological state of lives that teeter between paradise and catastrophe.”
Evangelia Aktipi
About the artist:
Evangelia Aktipi is currently based in Barcelona.
About the work:
“My project is based on how our smartphones are becoming our primary eye.”
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