About the project

The Image Cities project explores the role of photorealistic depictions in urban development by closely considering the images permeating the global cities, from life-scale, ultra-realistic renderings of future urban construction to the more intimate reminders of cultural identities of each place, advertisements, and other vernacular imagery. Samoylova’s aesthetic approach forms a unique lyrical and symbolic visual play. The artist employs collage-like pictorial strategies that merge figure and environment throughout her work.

It is a visual language made possible with the use of a telephoto lens – an antithetical tool to street photography’s traditions, yet one which allows the artist to compress visual space and complicate the distinctions between figure and ground. The slideshow video is assembled from 500 images representing 17 metropolises, constituting this series’s complete collection.