SULTRY SWEET SURREAL PORTRAITS: DARIA AMARANTH
DARIA AMARANTH
The most powerful portraits reflect silent stories. Russian photographer Daria Amaranth draws out these personal histories as if by magic, conjuring and spinning far beyond what a simple camera might normally capture.
Amaranth’s images have a mystical, melancholic atmosphere. She interjects her own vision of subconscious life, with beautiful, strange, imaginary possibilities, mixed together with real feelings, fears, and hopes.
With inspiration from movies, paintings, songs, and literary characters, Amaranth envisions portraits that tell tales which straddle various versions of each persona. Often ideas come unconsciously. Some evoke innocence, while others portray a disturbing beauty or mysterious charm
Save for a few photography classes, Amaranth is mainly self-taught. She has relied upon studying the works of great artists, photographers, and cinematographers, finding them to be her best teachers.
Amaranth finds inspiration in classical painting, impressionism, expressionism, and surrealism. The soft painterly qualities found in photographs by Anna Danilova, Sarah Moon, Francesca Woodman, Paolo Roversi, Diane Arbus, and Tim Walker have been a strong influence on Amaranth’s works.
Amaranth’s portraits are very poignant and beautifully composed. They may seem simple at first glance, but they are deep and complex. She adds meaning to each image, to create a new character each time.
The mood in each portrait is dramatic, melancholic, and somewhat clouded. The subjects seem to live in a surreal world in which emotions mix with vague and strange memories. She refers to “inner labyrinths.”
“I like to create mysterious and enigmatic atmospheres in my works, filled with melancholic, disturbing, touching emotions,” Amaranth explains. She describes her work as a “searching for mysteries with a camera.”
Intimate and sensual, Amaranth’s own inner self seeps in and fuses with that of her subjects. She feels them and they feel her. Psychoanalysis is a medium used liberally.
Other life forms, such as insects and reptiles, are often included in Amaranth’s portraits. They are meant to convey and amplify an emotional state… often adding a sense of uncertainty or ephemera. She tends to clothe her subjects in romantic vintage clothing pieces, which emphasize a sense of time travel.
Born in the north of Russia, Amaranth now lives and works in St Petersburg as a self-described. dreamer.
See more of Amaranth’s work on her Instagram.
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