Conceptual nominee

The art of illusion. Photography in itself is the art of illusion. A three-dimensional world on a sheet of paper, living people who never age.

But you can increase the degree of illusion to surrealism. It seems like an illustration to some fairy tale no one has heard of. Perhaps this tale has just not been written yet?

In this project, I construct a magical, surreal world in my tiny attic studio, where the main actors are my little daughter and me. We enact scenes and plots that are described nowhere except in my imagination.

All the images are created purely through photographic methods; there is no collage, no AI used.

My goal is for every viewer, when looking these photographs, to write their own fairy tale based on this illustration if they want to. To make everyone my co-author, to enter my imaginary fairytale world and add another room, city, country to it.

And I really hope that when there are many of these tales, we (all the authors) will publish a book of fairy tales.

Mari Saxon (real name Maria Sakson), fine art photographer, architect.
Mari was born in Moscow and lived there until 2022, when she moved to the USA. By education and profession, she is an architect with over 25 years of experience. In her youth, she bought a semi-professional camera and spent about 20 years as a mediocre amateur photographer in her free time. In 2022, she discovered fine art photography, and within the first year, she achieved some success. In the new country, she left architecture and fully dedicated herself to photography, which became her profession and passion.
In the year and a half that she has been involved in fine art photography, she has already received international awards. Her works are exhibited in the USA, Russia, Europe, and Asia.
My honors in 2024:
• IPA (Finalist, single image)
• HIPA (Finalist Black and White Category, single image)
• Critical Mass Top 200 Photolucida (Finalist)
• Nominated emerging photographer of the Hamburg Portfolio Review
• URBAN Photo Award (Semifinalist, single image)
• Belfast Photo Festival (Shortlisted, project)
• FAPA (Nominee in Portrait category, single image)
• FAPA (Nominee in Conceptual Category, project)