Anastasia Samoylova: FloodZone

Curated by Jamie M. Allen

George Eastman Museum, July 16–December 18, 2022

Anastasia Samoylova (American, b. Soviet Union, b. 1984), Pink Sidewalk, 2017, from FloodZone. Inkjet print, 40 × 32 in. (101.6 × 81.3 cm). Lent by the photographer.

© Anastasia Samoylova

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.

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 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.