Futuro Retro - a collection of photographs by Maria Svarbova
Published by New Heroes and Pioneers - 2019
RRP £50.00 (255pp)
For some time Maria Svarbova has been a photographer whose work have admired since I discovered her Swimming Pool and Girl Power series in 2018. This comprehensive book covers the last six years or so of her work. It is hard to believe that she has won many awards, including being named a Hasselblad Master, and shown worldwide (including in Vogue magazine) given that she only became a photographer in 2010 and has never received formal training. In fairness this last fact may have helped her.
She is now 32 years old.
Maria is Slovakian and lives in Bratislava. She studied archeology at University but was given a camera in her third year there by her sister and found her true profession.
Her work has an eerie and other worldly quality to it, hauntingly beautiful in its carefully chosen pastel shades but questioningly brutal in its emotionless examinations. Sometimes it harks back to a far more frugal time in Slovakia's history, to a time when communism made life more challenging and emotions less visible.
Maria works with a team of friends from art school bringing their knowledge of set design, styling and fashion into her world. Although she has been keen to cut her own path as a photographer in order to create an original style (which she has certainly achieved) the influences of her favourite artists such as David Hockney and Edward Hopper are more difficult for her to avoid. This is not a detriment.
The book is well printed and the photographs mainly full page (about 9" x 12"). Descriptions of her working methods and the background to her works are described too by the editors Francois Le Bled and Matt Porter. You can find out much more about her work on the web and through her very comprehensive website.
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