“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
Anastasiia Sapon, a San Francisco-based photographer who is originally from Ukraine, is an artist with a sense of adventure and desire to move deeply engrained within her DNA.
“I was born in Kiev, Ukraine. My father was in the military and my mom a nurse,” she once explained. “I watched my dad make prints in a homemade darkroom in our bathroom and I thought it was magic but never could think It will be my destiny,” she added, in what is not the first mention of fate as a beginning of her journey; neither is it the first feeling that this particular visual form of artistic expression was going to become her calling card.
After studying management in tourism, hotels and restaurant business from Kiev University of Tourism, Economics and Law 2007, Sapon had already sown the seeds for what was to be her eventual destiny. “I’m inspired to travel and hope to inspire other people to create and adventure,” she explained. “I believe that dreams come true if you work for it and I’m thankful for all I have every day.”
While raised in Ukraine, it was a move to the United States that arrived as her moment of artistic awakening. Though she had always been surrounded by the photography format, the opportunity to make that career was one that had yet to materialise. With a clear aesthetic, Sapon has gone on to be featured in some of the world’s leading publications, the likes of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and more pulling reference to her work.
“My family used to move a lot and since then I am always in search of new places and interesting people,” Sapon once said. “I remember my father taking family photos with a FED 5V that now belongs to me, moving me towards a dream I didn’t even know I had, to become a photographer,” she added. It is in this sentiment that we can grasp the magnitude of artistic expression that Anastasiia Sapon holds in the heart of her photography.
Among the major projects of which she has taken on, the likes of still life, portraits and more, it is in the personal in which Sapon thrives. Combining the key elements that shaped her creative vision, she continues to document her exploration of the world through her running series entitled ‘Journey‘. In it, she wonderfully captures the juxtaposition of stark colours in the landscape, the vast poetry of expansive aerial shots, and the subtly nostalgia of the people closest to her.
“I always loved travelling,” she says. “Waking up to a new view, meeting new people, opening my mind to the rest of the world and letting the new to come in.”
See an example of Anastasiia’s work, below.
All images provided to Far Out Magazine via Anastasiia Sapon. See more of her work, here.