Alisa Gill

My name is Alisa Gill, I was born in St. Petersburg. I studied at the Stieglitz Academy of Arts and Industry in the Design Department.

I find photography the most accessible way to show the reality I produce: this is my way of communication with the world. My dad gave me my first camera when I was in 8th grade of school, so the camera became my tool. My shootings are staged, but still they can be called documentaries, as collected information about an act that has been committed. The subjects are linked to specific characters that I immerse in a specific situation. The footage is tightly intertwined with life situations, and you can trace some biographical facts from it.
I love the way the film captures and reveals the Light on people in the space, and how one or a few moments can closely convey the atmosphere of the performance.

I am inspired by artists, writers, philosophers, and composers. Gustave Dore, Bruegel, Italian Renaissance paintings, Dante Alighieri, Prudentius, Goethe. Among my contemporaries I can name Maksim Isayev (AKHE engineering theatre), his sketches of scenography and texts are close and understandable to me. I am not inspired by other photographers' work.
Most subjects are related to my discoveries in the world of people. I work on each project for 5-10 years. My first big series was "Man as Material". And then research on the human condition in society began. After the project in 2014, I curated a group exhibition with the same name in the ruined St. Anne's Lutheran Church in downtown of St. Petersburg. This project allowed me, the artist Daria Bedrik and the philologist Ksenia Butuzova to launch the Annenkirche exhibition and concert space. The works of the series were also presented there for the first time.

"Struggle in the Soul" is a project following my first series through a different, sensual-emotional lens. It is an experimental project aiming to find a language that we would use to discuss the soul and the ethics. This series includes shooting of "sins and virtues," subtle states of obsession, extravaganza, schemes for building healthy social connections, and universal recipes for a harmonious sense of self in society. Each shoot is an existential performance. By immersing the characters in a particular subject, I simulate a peculiar state of the participants corresponding to the subject of the photograph. I become both a participant and a spectator, while documenting moments of performance on film.
I am very attracted to multi-figure compositions. I dream of shooting large groups of a hundred or more people.
It is good when a photograph becomes an independent object, a completed subject when it goes beyond the boundaries of the phone or computer screen unless a creative idea is built on such a way of exposure.
Text Anna Laza
Alisa Gill's photographs at Experiment online Gallery
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