End of page

Back to overview

Maria Trofimova

Awarded

Maria Trofimova

Photo research 'BYZANTINE SUPERJET (The Field of Wonders)' (diploma work)

Photography

Jury report

Worlds Apart
Maria Trofi­mova has been awarded a Swiss Fed­eral De­sign Grant for her de­gree piece 'BYZAN­TINE SU­PER­JET (The Field of Won­ders)'. The title it­self sug­gests a clash of worlds. With the aid of cut­ting-edge tech­nol­ogy, we find our­selves sud­denly cat­a­pulted into an­other, dif­fer­ent, per­haps by­gone world. The sub­ti­tle of­fers an ad­di­tional clue: The Field of Won­ders does in­deed open up a broad realm of the imag­i­na­tion, cu­riosi­ties, clichés, stereo­types and, as it turns out, the ethno­graphic gaze.
Russ­ian-born Maria Trofi­mova came to Switzer­land in 1990 at the age of six. Haunted by vague child­hood mem­o­ries of a far­away, seem­ingly by­gone time, she de­cided to re­turn to Rus­sia to un­der­take her de­gree pro­ject. A tourist in her na­tive coun­try, she won­dered what would hap­pen after all these years when im­ages and west­ern clichés about Rus­sia met with re­al­ity. That was what Maria Trofi­mova wanted to find out – partly for her­self, but also as a study in the per­cep­tions of oth­er­ness and iden­tity or, more specif­i­cally, how we per­ceive oth­ers and oth­ers per­ceive us. She ex­plores as­pects of mem­ory: not only seek­ing and find­ing mem­ory, but also the role that mem­ory plays in the at­tempt to forge iden­tity. Fi­nally, she also con­fronts us with the some­what sober­ing re­al­i­sa­tion that there is lit­tle to dis­tin­guish be­tween fam­ily pic­tures, pro­pa­ganda im­ages from the So­viet era, and doc­u­men­tary, staged and found pho­tog­ra­phy. Many dif­fer­ent lines of en­quiry in­ter­sect here. Her pho­to­graphic work is chan­nelled into a forty-four page diary in A3 for­mat. There, a world un­folds that seems strangely alien and yet at the same time fa­mil­iar. The paper and lay­out af­fec­tion­ately re­call a fam­ily album. How­ever, Maria Trofi­mova does not help us to read the im­ages. What we see is what we make of them our­selves. The in­ter­pre­ta­tion of her work is en­tirely in the eye of the be­holder. That is both its beauty and its strength.
Pa­trizia Criv­elli

Biography

Maria Trofimova
Born in
1984
Education
designer HES en communication visuelle

Back to overview

Top of page