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Imperfections

I explore how the standards of female beauty in society and the reaction of society to these changes are changing in the modern world. The project is dedicated to taking your body.

In different eras there were completely different standards of the female body, Rubensian fluffy ladies replaced the ancient goddesses of perfect beauty, and the refined ladies of the modern epoch even more subtle twiggy models. And although the fight against bodybuilding has been going on for a long time, and the adoption of age-related changes is becoming a positive trend, yet for many women there is the problem of taking their bodies. The name of the project is a universal phrase that helps my heroines to cope with all their anxieties about their body and age.

I find women of irregular shape or appearance and show them as they are, without embellishing. One woman has a face distorted from birth, but she is beautiful and with this face, she is magnified by her own work, she is a mother, she has no time to think about her injury and there is no need to hide this face. She is not shy when I ask her to take a picture for the project.

I met another hero in the subway. She looked like a famous actress who suddenly found herself in the dark U bahn no longer and blinding everyone with her skin. But her eyes mowed down, which did not spoil her in the slightest, but only attracted her attention.

Some heroines in my project "too old”, someone is “too full”. Someone I manage to write down their history, their relationship to their appearance and the attitude towards others. Many have an idea, and how attitudes have changed with their appearance over time. The line “body as memory” is especially important. Scars, tattoos, bruises... 

Pandemiepanik.jpg
Morgen..jpg

Grandma was leaving

I have documented how my grandmother's emotions changed from a joyful smile to an anxious pensive expression on the day we gathered for a farewell dinner to mark her departure from the country, emigration. 

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Yanka Smetanina 

artist  |  researcher  | curator 

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