Nature Reigns In Landface By Anastasia Savinova

Anastasia Savinova’s ‘Landface’ series is both landscape photography and self-portraiture; an exploration of human intimacy and nature set against a backdrop of the magnificent north.

Photographed in Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden, this collection of photographs takes the spectacular of nature and turns it into a veil that obscures individuality and destroys the ego. “When humans see their reflection in a mirror,” Savinova explains, “an image of their face takes a central position and nature becomes a mere backdrop.” In ‘Landface’ the opposite occurs. The human face becomes a reflection of the landscape; its colors and textures in synthesis with its surrounds, both separate and connected to its surrounds. Using plants and other natural matter abundant in the various landscapes—mud, ice, stone—Savinova creates her masks. She likens the act of donning these masks to a ritualistic practice; in which the “body becomes a listening body; through the physical blindness, all other senses grow acute. A trusting intuitive body enters the mystery of the landscape, breathing in unison, inheriting the wisdom of the land’s body.”