Artist Statement
Untitled is an ongoing master series of black-and-white macro photographs of living plant elements. The photographs are taken in nature. The subjects are small, inconsequential and often not noticed or seen, but unique and precious.

The series is abstract in that there is a departure from reality. The black-and-white, the macro lens, the emphasis on symmetry and on composition: these have the power to distill certain aspects of the subjects.

Although the medium is photography, I think of my work as sculpture. There is an emphasis on the architecture, form and texture of the plants. Furthermore I stress what the subjects may evoke in the viewer. Certain subjects, by their physicality, the way they hang, the way they are intertwined, may evoke certain animal and/or human behaviors such as withdrawal, sensuality, love.

The series' uniform portrait format acts as a sculptural base that not only contains the subject but also is used to emphasize its essence. The stem of a leaf is stretched up against the length of the frame in order to enhance a certain behavior that the subject evokes.

I have no wish to educate or impose my own thoughts on viewers, but rather I want them to see and feel things independently. For this reason my work is untitled.

As a whole, the series is a spectrum of images that enables the viewer to shift from one image to another and compare.

The image itself - the larger-than-life scale of the subject, the attention to detail, the way the image evokes certain behaviors - has the power to seize the attention of the viewer, and focus it. My artwork invites contemplation.

 

 

Anna Agoston is an award-winning contemporary artist whose medium is photography. A resident of Brooklyn, New York, Anna was born and raised in Paris, France. Always passionate about art, she qualified as an architect DPLG (government-certification) at the Ecole d'Architecture Paris Malaquais, and went on to earn the M.Arch.II degree in architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. There, she studied fine art photography under Professor Jim Dow of the Department of Visual and Environmental studies, and photographed her first series, “Dorm.”

As an architecture student Anna interned for the internationally renowned architecture firm Toyo Ito and Associates, in Tokyo, Japan. She went on to work for prestigious architecture firms such as Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates Architects, and Peter Marino Architect. Between 2005 and 2011 she specialized in high-end single family architecture while working for Ike Kligerman Barkley Architects. In 2002 she co-wrote with Professor Antoine Picon, the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, "Building in the information age: On architectural metaphor and its limits", Professor Ron Witte (editor), Toyo Ito. Mediatheque of Sendai (Case Series), Munich, Prestel, 2002, pp. 59.

In October 2013, Anna made her lifelong passion, fine art photography her main professional occupation. Since January 2014, her work has been included in fourteen juried group exhibitions, in ten different states. One of her pictures is now a part of the Permanent Collection at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana. She has received six international awards, and has been published online several times. Her self- published books "Untitled Vol.1", "Untitled Vol.2" were recently added to the library at the Museum of Modern Art, the library at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirsch library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the library at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Library at the Harvard Art Museums.

Also concerning her book, Anna was honored to receive an email on May 22nd, 2014, from the internationally renowned architect and recipient of the 2013 Pritzker architecture prize Mr. Toyo Ito. In his email Toyo Ito writes "Pictures in your book are so beautiful that they give me design inspiration.”

On July 22 2015, Anna's first article "An Artist's Perspective on Inspiration and Making Art" was published on the Huffington Post Arts & Culture Blog. The next day, Mrs. Arianna Huffington tweeted to mention the post. Her second article "Art Seen through the Lens of its Architect" was published on the Huffington Post Arts & Culture Blog on December 31, 2015. Her third-person review of her second self-published book, "Untitled Vol. 2", appeared in L'Oeil de la Photographie (February 2016).

Anna challenges the concept of aesthetics, by making art that is intended to invite contemplation. Her artwork consists of black-and-white macro photographs of living plant elements found in nature.