BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anna Timofeeva, a Russian Jewish-born artist, is currently based in London. She began her professional photography career at the age of 16. Born and raised in a forest where prominent Soviet architects, musicians, and artists were based, their creativity, interwoven prominently into her community, established the foundation for her visual perspective. Her first photography exhibition took place in Moscow in 2021 at the Young Artists Art Festival. This series of photographs was dedicated to freedom and youth.

After enrolling in Central Saint Martins and moving to London, Anna joined the Pivot 7 club, where she took on the role of art director. In 2023, Anna began her flirtation with performance art. She staged her first performance in Moscow, dedicated to the bi-directionality of masculinity and femininity. In March 2024, she presented a street photography exhibition at the Bomb Factory Foundation in Marylebone. Anna followed her infatuation with performative art and this time dedicated her movement to an expression addressing contemporary issues focusing on collective societal morality.

During the Autumn of 2023, Anna shifted her focus onto street photography, complementing the immediacy of her performance art with candid performances in the streets. The fast pace of urbanized modernity inspired her to capture moments caught, seemingly, “on the go”. The stillness of the photographs contrasted the perpetuity of existence, startling the creatures passing by with an instantaneous flash that froze them in time. In Anna’s time, in Anna’s universe, where they exist according to her and her solipsistic vision. Anna’s photography, thus, is constituted by subjects unaware of being a photographer. Identity exists not as a definition, but as a constant negotiation, between subject and object, between subjectivity and objectivity. Spontaneity is hence considered the primary element of street photography by Anna.

Photography is about being in the right place at the right time. Many may consider this luck, others argue imperatively that there is no such thing as fate. For Anna, the crucial moment is that of pushing down on the camera shutter, as the photograph takes shape and curates reality within the lens. Her images mystify and depart from traditional views - the norms of photography have shattered: their hypnotic simplicity precluded any effect of disillusionment. Without pattern, without borders, Anna’s photography continues to evolve and surprise not only the spectatorship but Anna herself - as her fundamental belief and attitude toward her creativity begins and ends with honesty. In a world of obscurity and calculative representation of identity, her authenticity, rawness, and bravery are what set Anna apart from the many who fear sincerity. They say that describing somebody takes something away from them. Who she is, is an artist who believes not in omniscient deciphering, but in observing and reinterpreting.