“Well, they are not that random, to be honest,” The project stands on three main concepts: migration, origins, and cosmos,” Alisa Martynova tells us, correcting our thought that her project, Nowhere Near, has random objects. “All the objects you see in the pictures have a relation to at least one of the main concepts.” Alisa’s project is a contemplative one that compares migrants to those of the scattered stars across the universe. It also brings up essential objects. But most of all, the images are stunning.
All images by Alisa Martynova. Used with permission. For more, please check out her website and her Instagram. Want to be featured? Click here to see how we can feature your work.
How Alisa Martynova Got Her Start
Alisa first got into photography when at her University, studying Foreign philology. “I was acting in a theatre and was really into films,” she recalls, while also remembering that she actually wanted to direct films. But when she took a darkroom photography class, she knew that that’s what she wanted to do instead. It was the first that she understood that photography lly a means of expression. To her, it felt really natural.
She’s used a variety of cameras in her career, but recently she’s been using Leica a lot. In fact, she’s worked with Leica before and tells at they’re very supportive of her work. Currently, Alisa uses the SL2 and SL because they work best in low-light conditions. On top of that, she gets good color results.
Nowhere Near
Nowhere Near is about both the people and the stars. While some may call it a diaspora of migrants, I donthinkhat these words do justice to those folks. But specifically, Nowhere Near compares the migration of African immigrants in Italy to the stars. The project then continued in France.
When you look at the project, you might not totally understand it at first. You’ll see spectacular portraits, photos of objects, and of the stars. Objectively, just by looking at i,t you might think that it’s a project of people migrating from one place to another and then trying to reconnect with their roots. But therea ‘s deeper meaning, especially to the objects. For example, one of the photos is of a desert rote: a specific crystal found in the countries wheremanye migrants are from, such as Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, and Algeria. “The shape of the rose is quite mysterious, and while I was rolling it in my hands, I saw that from a certain point of view, it looked like an extraterrestrial, a meteorite, a piece of star suspended somewhere in the galaxy,” Alisa tells us.
Objects like this are found throughout the project. A leopard skin refers to the totem animal in the cultures. The picture of the leopard skin refers to the fact, that leopard is one of the totem animals in the culture of some parts of the African continent, “…because of its discretion, the leopard is a shrewd figure in African legends: it has a reputation of erasing its tracks with its tail as it progresses,” explains Alisa. “Some African kings wore hoods or cloaks in leopard fur or covered the thrones with leopard skin.”
One portrait thgenuinelyuly stood out to us is of a woman named Blessing. It’s the only portrawith movement it and seems completely surreal. Blessing’s portrait is the lead image of this article. We can all agree with how hauntingly beautiful it is.
Specifically, Alisa wanted it to be this way. “She told me that she used to have strange and colorful recurrent dreams, like red rivers that were impossible to cross, the big trees growing on the rocks, and others,” Alisa explo us. “Some of my landscapes have come from those visions. This picture came as a result of my intention to picture Blessing as a dreamy figure, almost a supernatural being, deeply connected to her roots and culture.” To do this, Alisa went to the rocky seaside in Livorno. When shooting, Alisa asked Blessing to move slightly. The result is a stunning portrait.
About AI in Photography
What we love about Alisa’s work is that it doesn’t appear to be something that we’d ever see in AI portraits and photographs that have been made. To us, it’s something that’s unapologetically human. This has been something that Alisa has been thinking actively about, and she tells us that it’s a topic of one of her next projects.
“I have started working on the theme of the human-machine relationship during the pandemic, but now it becomes even more urgent,” Alisa says. “I feel that there is a lot of potential in AI-powered projects, but I truly believe that we have to be very careful with it. It can provide an endless source of inspiration, but it also can be dangerously misleading.”
