Behind The Scenes by Yelena Zhavoronkova

The process of working on still lives is very exciting. Even after you think you have imagined a final outcome in your mind—what seems to be just a quick arrangement and a camera click away, it surprises you and you find yourself drawn to changing the composition and adjusting its elements. Everything turns to motion—backgrounds, objects, lights. Piles of discarded “left overs” begin to appear and grow. At a certain point, you glance at the piles and see a new inspiration—an interesting shape, a fresh spark of light, an unexpected color. It triggers the imagination and sends you on another journey—a new story that wishes to be told. 

My collection “Behind the Scenes,” is a result of one such journey. For its images, I worked with objects I had previously used in other projects, but had originally regarded as supporting elements. This time, I decided to elevate them to leading roles of their own by organizing them in laconic sets and shooting them with straightforward lighting. The approach gave me an opportunity to express my fascination with beauty found in simple shapes, in symmetry of enclosing spaces, and in relation between objects and lighting.

Yelena Zhavoronkova
Yelena Zhavoronkova is a California based Fine Art Photographer and Graphic Designer. She received a Master’s degree in Industrial Design from the St. Petersburg Academy of Art and Industry, Russia, and has worked as a graphic designer for over three decades. Over the past decade Yelena has been intensively studying and working in photography, which helps her to express her artistic vision. Yelena’s projects are simultaneously very personal and universal in nature, speaking to the viewers on an intimate level that is familiar to all.

Since 2010 her projects has been exhibited in de Young Museum of Arts, City Hall of San Francisco, Corden|Potts Gallery, SF Camerawork, RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco; Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California; SoHo Photo Gallery of New York; Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts; Blue Sky and LightBox Photographic Galleries in Oregon; and many other galleries around United States. Her projects were shown in Anzenberger Gallery in Vienna, Austria; in Milan, Italy and participated in Noorderlicht International Photo Festival INVIVO in Museum Belvédere, Heerenveen,The Netherlands. Her works and interviews were published in the online edition of The New Yorker magazine; Black and White, Analog Forever, All About Photo, Shutterbug magazines and Transformation literary journal, among others. As a part of the Indie Photobook Library Collection Yelena’s “Memories in Red” book is included in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. For four consecutive years (2016-19) she was a finalist in the Photolucida’s International Competition Critical Mass.

Yelena’s Archival Digital, Silver Gelatin, Platinum/Palladium prints and Copperplate Photogravures are the part of many private collections and institutions in USA and in Europe. Currently she represented by the Anzenberger Gallery in Vienna, Austria and Corden|Potts Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

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Virginia Hanusik: Into the Quiet and the Light

By Virginia Hanusik

Publisher : Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

2024 | 184 pages

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water―and the history of controlling it―is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry―past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

With texts from Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Rawsht Twana: Twana’s Box

By Rawsht Twana

Publisher : Fraglich Publishing

2024 | 252 pages

Twana’s Box' can be described in many ways: a journey through a photographer’s rare archive, documenting the Kurdistan region of Iraq from 1974–1992; a son’s quest to find his lost father, who was murdered by a military regime; a young man’s way to piece together the fragments of a scattered family in a scattered culture; the becoming of a photographer who, through the stories of others, starts to understand his own identity in times of war. 'Twana’s Box' is not only the photo book that holds a selection of Twana Abdullah’s archive; it is a unique insight into a time and place in a region that has since completely transformed. Rawsht has spent years piecing together his father’s negatives and stories. His archival work inspired him to become a photographer himself, working for Metrography – the first independent Iraqi photo agency – before immigrating to Europe. ills colour & bw, 21 x 27 cm, hb, Kurdish/Arabic/English

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering

By Akinbode Akinbiyi

Publisher : Spector Books

2024 | 252 pages

Taken across Europe and Africa, Akinbiyi’s images of everyday city life muse on the sociopolitical labyrinths of urban society

Whether in Bamako, Berlin, London, Lagos or Durban, British photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi (born 1946) creates black-and-white street scenes that function as visual metaphors, ruminating on cultural change, social exclusion and colonialism’s effect on urban planning.

Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm

By Grace Wales Bonner

Publisher : The Museum of Modern Art, New York

2024 | 184 pages

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer
This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.

Behind The Scenes by Yelena Zhavoronkova

All about Yelena Zhavoronkova

Selected Books