Anastasia Egonyan’s Visual Dichotomies: Personal Figures, Impersonal Cities

BY SVETLANA POPOVA

Anastasia Egonyan is a contemporary photographer and artist from Ukraine with Armenian roots, currently based in Berlin. She actively participates in exhibitions across Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Her photographic language embodies the coexistence of two seemingly opposite approaches that, paradoxically, enhance each other.

As a photographer, Egonyan is drawn to two visual extremes: depersonalized, human-free views of large capitalist metropolises, and nude figures frozen in poignant, semiotically rich poses. The interplay between these contrasting visual strategies within a single artistic context beautifully illustrates the originality and professionalism of her creative vision.

Cities

Egonyan’s urban landscapes are infused with artificial life: streetlights and indoor lighting shine, neon signs glow, and public spaces and technical facilities function as intended. Yet, these spaces are devoid of human presence. The people who built these technological environments have seemingly vanished, leaving traces of their existence in posters and large formats. Where have they gone?

According to Egonyan’s aesthetic, they may have hidden away, fled forever, entered a parallel world, or become meta-observers. It does not matter whether the city is Paris, Berlin, or elsewhere; Egonyan finds a common thread among them: the dissonance between the scale of the city and its parts relative to the average human body. In the absence of human figures, these cities feel abandoned and desolate.

This subtle yet ironic recognition of fundamental human values in Egonyan’s work reflects our tendency to view the absence of people in familiar spaces as a tragedy, revealing our deep-rooted anthropocentrism. Here, Egonyan critiques not only this anthropocentrism but also the viewers’ unexamined assumptions about humanity’s place in urban landscapes.

Figures

Egonyan’s photographs of human figures stand in stark contrast to her cityscapes. Whereas her urban images depict an alien, somewhat theatrical setting, her work with nudes presents a scene of vulnerability within a carefully crafted, intimate environment.

Her artistic approach is ethical, aimed at avoiding the objectification of the body while retaining a fundamentally personal relationship with her models and a narrative integrity in the final image. In line with Egonyan’s intentions, these photographs avoid any false pathos or artificiality; they are created in natural, intimate spaces—often the photographer’s home or other organic interiors.

Egonyan’s approach combines deliberate composition with improvisation, emphasizing the dynamics and unpredictability of the process. The ultimate aim of her work is to challenge societal perceptions of objectified bodies, inviting viewers to engage with the personhood behind each figure.

BY SVETLANA POPOVA

Cities

Figures

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