Artist Statement
Six months ago my family and I moved to New York from Russia. I expected it to be hard, adjusting to a new school and people. But I never thought that one of the biggest challenges would be adjusting and getting used to New York as a city: to its buildings, streets, layout, parks. The first couple of months I had this unsettling feeling every time I would walk around the city, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint why it felt that way. As I started to take pictures of New York and its buildings, I realized that a lot of them look like patterns. You almost couldn’t tell it’s a building just by looking at the photo. I think the city feels very artificial to me. It is very different from what I’ve seen in Europe. Every street is almost the same as the previous one, and you will never reach a dead end or find a narrow street with less than ten people. It’s almost like you are walking in a labyrinth or in a video game. That’s what I wanted photos to feel like, for you to almost have to look a second time to realize that that is a building in front of you.I wanted these images to look not like buildings but like patterns that form within that structure. I think that for now that’s how I experience this city, like a bunch of patterns that don’t yet add up to a city that I could see as a whole.
About the Artist
My name is Vasilisa and I am a student at Urban Academy Laboratory High School. I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures but after a not very pleasant experience of going into photography classes, for a while I stopped taking pictures, but going to nyu kinda helped me rediscover it and find interest in it again. As if right now I think I’m just trying to find my style and try and experiment with different things to find something that would resonate with me.
This project was created in Future Imagemakers in the NYU Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts in Spring 2023.
To go to the 2023 Future Imagemakers Gallery, click here.