Svetlana Smirnova

Svetlana Smirnova is an artist working with photography as a medium.
Svetlana photographs urban landscapes, transforming three-dimensional city spaces into two-dimensional abstract compositions. A dialogue between the harmony of color and shape is happening through the game with flattened space. The documentary nature of the photograph is moved to the background and gives a way to the author’s visual language.

In her works, Svetlana ponders how reducing the amount of detail can increase the impact on the viewer, and how this redirects the viewer’s internal dialogue from analyzing objects in the territory of personal emotional perception and gives the viewer wider opportunities for photo interpretation.

Photos are made without collage by means of optical lens effects. Svetlana is inspired by small coastal towns she witnessed all over the world during her trips, places where you can meet beauty in the simplicity of unremarkable urban landscapes.


Saint-Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design and at Higher School of Printing and Media Technologies