Elena Lyakir

Through the medium of photography I examine how emotions and memories are captured in photographs representing reality in symbols. I believe that feeling is crucial to creating and understanding a work of art. Thus I am driven by visceral and emotional responses to the process of seeing. I see nature as the first and most fundamental source of essence and myth and I am inspired by both its beauty and nourishment, as well as its unpredictability and fierceness, while birds are universal symbols of hope, freedom, and migration. The emotional ramifications of my own displacement and diaspora relate to how I feel towards nature. I am always in flux and on a journey to find a place to call home. My interest in the aesthetic relationship between photography and other disciplines influences my whimsical approach. I intend to push the limits of the medium to suggest painterly abstractions. I employ tilt-shift lenses because they allow room for spontaneity and often help reveal the unseen. The resulting deviations lead me to new discoveries. I enjoy the extemporaneous quality of these processes and view my practice as an extension of seeing and an exercise of instinct and connectivity.