A woman‘s touch to women photography

Tiana Markova-​Gold attrac­ted me with her per­sonal approach to the pho­to­graphed object, which in her pho­tos, through a par­tic­u­lar cosy present­a­tion, becomes an old friend or just a human being. It is someone who’s not so far away from you and it doesn’t mat­ter what dis­tance or social divide would sep­ar­ate you. All that is left is what’s most import­ant, what is in a human being, in his per­son­al­ity. A single photo by T. Markova-​Gold can tell more than the whole autobiography.

The first “story” that pushed me to become inter­ested in this author is called Jenna. It’s a photo story about a higher class pros­ti­tute, how­ever, it’s not like any story that I am used to hear and see. Here it is not attemp­ted to emphas­ize the dark and sad every­day life of a woman, who is selling her body for money. On the con­trary, everything is con­versely covered with the aura of inner calmness and pride in her profession.

Unpacking in a Miami hotel

I was anxious to drop off my clothes and walk around naked! I hate winter almost more than any­thing else. – Jenna

The pho­tos are enriched by short quotes from Jenna’s thoughts and memor­ies. The present­a­tion of such cycle, the per­spect­ive of the pho­tos them­selves and the fram­ing in a way to con­vert the viewer into a cup of tea, a pen lying on the table or the host­ess watch­ing from the lamp above. Such angle of sight simply puts us in the life of the char­ac­ter and we unavoid­ably become wit­nesses of her intim­ate life moments.

I think that every one of us has at least once thought about how inter­est­ing it would be to become unnotice­able. One could secretly, at least with the corner of the eye, see the life of a com­pletely relaxed man, without the every­day mask that one cre­ates for friends, enemies, even for the closest people. It’s sur­pris­ing to what way T. Markova-​Gold man­ages to inter­com­mu­nic­ate with her mod­els and to con­vey their free­dom breath­ing lives so well.

So far T. Markova-​Gold has vis­ited a lot of coun­tries, from coun­tries in Southern and South-​Eeastern Asia, in the Middle East to European coun­tries, the Caribbean and even African coun­tries. Such young woman’s life style has widened her hori­zon and also encour­aged her to monu­ment­al­ize all this in some way. Yes, T. Markova-​Gold star­ted pho­to­graph­ing simply for her travel album. However, again, the recog­ni­tion came through friends. One photographer’s friend, work­ing in a magazine, was fas­cin­ated by the girl’s travel pho­tos and pub­lished them. In May last year the author was awar­ded “The Best Student Book” nom­in­a­tion in the New York pho­to­graphy festival.

Women are the main char­ac­ters in T. Makova-Gold’s pho­tos. Another emo­tion­ally strong photo ses­sion by her was the moments of New York pros­ti­tutes’ life. This brave girl was wan­der­ing alone in dark and dan­ger­ous areas of the city, inter­viewed girls work­ing there. This way she was get­ting closer to them. After a long period of time they let her into their envir­on­ment and lives. I think it’s a great example of how a pho­to­grapher has to have not only a good eye but also a cha­ris­matic and hon­est per­son­al­ity so that a model would trust him and would open up to him.

More works here.

About author:

Aleksandr Pasevin
Aleksandr Pasevin is Art Pit’s strategist and designer, responsible for organization’s creative solutions. Aleksandr is also actively interested in new technologies, their connection with creativity and usage in cultural organizations. Aleksandr dislikes long discussions and considerations, and he mostly expresses his opinion quickly about whet... Read further >