Opening peoples eyes to the possibility of photography and visual art, Tatiana Gulenkiana explores with mixed process and media to create these beautiful images, which transport the viewer to another dimension with vivid colours and time warping shapes.
Hey! Please introduce yourself and what you do!
Hi! My name is Tatiana Gulenkina, and I’m a Russian-born, US-based photographic artist. I work mostly in fine art and editorial, and my projects tend to be a bit more on a conceptual side.
What is it about your practice that you find so exciting and keeps you hooked?
I love pushing the medium and seeing where it could take me by experimenting with alternative processes, photograms and cyanotypes, multiple exposures, unusual surfaces. Working this way involves lots of trying over and over again, and eventually it turns into a meditative process when the attachment to the final product disappears. Or it can be looked at as a scientific experiment with a set starting point and images gradually developing according on their own trajectories.
If you could experiment with any other medium, what would you choose?
Sculpture and installation; in fact, I already started integrating different 3D aspects in my practice by working with layers and collage.
Where do you get your daily inspiration?
Nature and movement
Are there any artists/photographers/writers/filmmakers or musicians where you have in mind when looking at creating new works?
I mostly look for an inspiration in other art forms. Shane Carruth and Jonathan Glazer are my recent favorites in film, and Moby and Future Islands (among many others) in music
What are you currently working on that you just can’t get enough of?
I’m working on the series of distressed cyanotype portraits. Photographs, especially physical prints, tend to create an illusion of holding on to certain places and people, but ironically, in a world obsessed with the image, images are easily discarded. I was drawn to working with cyanotypes because of the immediacy of the process and the texture of paper, which, unlike glossy surface, easily absorbs water and can be treated in a number of ways. By subjecting them to natural elements, I wanted to play with materiality of the medium and vulnerability of photographic memories.
What’s next for you?
Hopefully I’ll get to work on a travel photo project this summer!
