The Questionnaire : Deana Nastic by Carole Schmitz

Deana Nastic: Photography Beyond Painting

In Deana Nastic‘s work, light is never used simply to illuminate the world; it reshapes its contours. It does not reveal it transforms. Rather than fixing reality, it unsettles our certainties about it. Her images move beyond documentation to become sensory experiences, where the visible trembles, forms dissolve, and physical presence gives way to something more elusive and inward. Rejecting descriptive photography, Nastic explores the fragile threshold where the figure emerges even as it disappears, suspended between appearance and erasure, memory and imagination. This distinctive vision stems from an equally singular artistic journey. Trained first as a painter before turning to photography, Deana Nastic never truly abandoned her original language she merely exchanged her tools. The camera did not replace the paintbrush; it became a contemporary counterpart. Where others pursue precision, she embraces ambiguity. Where photography has traditionally promised evidence, she seeks suggestion. Her practice inhabits a fertile territory where disciplinary boundaries lose their relevance. Long exposures, subtle camera movements, and an almost choreographic command of light produce images that appear less captured than painted. Black and white is fundamental to this process. Freed from the distractions of colour, the image regains an almost mineral density, composed of transparency, veils, and breath. Bodies emerge not as fixed presences but as luminous traces, suspended between materiality and disappearance. Yet to define her work solely through the legacy of Pictorialism would be limiting. While the softness of her images occasionally recalls charcoal drawings, ink washes, or Symbolist experiments, Nastic’s visible language is unmistakably modern. Her blur is rarely nostalgic; it questions the very act of seeing. At a time when digital images relentlessly pursues ever better sharpness, decision, and management, she chooses imperfection, managed probability, and ambiguity as a substitute. Her pictures resist fast consumption, inviting a slower, extra contemplative gaze.

The human physique occupies a central place inside this investigation. Dancers, nudes, and portraits are by no means handled as topics to be represented, however as surfaces of transformation. They grow to be areas the place mild behaves like a dwelling materials. Outlines dissolve, identities fade, and what stays is a presence that’s emotional somewhat than bodily. Movement is now not depicted it turns into the very substance of the picture. What unfolds earlier than the lens isn’t efficiency, however the gradual dissolution of type into pure power. This aesthetic of effacement lends her work an nearly metaphysical dimension. Deana Nastic’s images doesn’t search to arrest time, however to make its passage perceptible. Each picture appears to include a number of moments layered upon each other, as if reminiscence itself had settled gently onto the photographic floor. Rather than capturing a single prompt, her pictures reveal length. More than an exploration of images’s formal potentialities, Deana Nastic’s work is a meditation  on notion itself. It reminds us that seeing isn’t merely the act of figuring out types, however of embracing uncertainty, silence, and absence. In this fixed oscillation between look and disappearance, between images and portray, she has developed a piece of outstanding coherence,  one wherein the photographic picture ceases to document the seen and as a substitute turns into the sensory expertise of all that finally escapes the attention.

 

Website : www.noemiaprada.com
Instagram : @noemiaprada
Represented by Galerie GADCOLLECTION, 4 rue du Pont Louis-Philippe – 75004 Paris
@galeriegadcollection

 

Your first photographic set off?
Deana Nastic : Taking {a photograph} of a nude mannequin with a pure window mild falling on her again.

A photographic reminiscence out of your childhood?
Deana Nastic : Ski journey with my dad.

The digicam of your childhood?
Deana Nastic : Canon movie digicam.

The one you utilize immediately?
Deana Nastic : Hasselblad x 1 D II and Nikon D 800.

The man or girl of the picture who impressed you?
Deana Nastic : Steve Jobs by Albert Watson. Shot was taken when Albert Watson informed Steve Jobs: Think of all people who informed you No.

The picture you want you had taken?
Deana Nastic : Image of my father in his studio, the place he spent days and nights sketching and rendering his architectural plans.

The one which moved you probably the most?
Deana Nastic : “Grace Portrait” by Erwin Olaf, from Grief  Series.

And the one which made you offended?
Deana Nastic : “Death of Alan Kurdi by Nilufer Demir.

Which {photograph} modified the world?
Deana Nastic : “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange.

A key picture in your private pantheon?
Deana Nastic : “Circle of Life”, I took few years in the past.

Which {photograph} modified your world?
Deana Nastic : I can talked about solely my very own {photograph} that modified my world. ”Silhouette V” that was chosen by a European gallery to be exhibited. Since then, I’ve been spending extra time in Europe whereas exhibiting in numerous galleries.

What pursuits you most in a picture?
Deana Nastic : Feeling, which might derive from a strong story that’s behind a picture.

What particulars you look in a face, panorama or object?
Deana Nastic : Eyes in a face, sky in a panorama and light-weight on object.

Elliot Erwitt unhappy: Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretative.” Do you agree?
Deana Nastic : Yes.

In your opinion, can method generally take priority over emotion in images?
Deana Nastic : Absolutely sure.

Is magnificence in images, for you, purely aesthetic?
Deana Nastic : Not in any respect.

What parts could make silence seen in {a photograph}?
Deana Nastic : Body language in addition to story behind picture.

Does the distinctiveness of {a photograph} come from the second or from staging? Can {a photograph} be more true than actuality?
Deana Nastic : The uniqueness of {a photograph} comes from the second, however on the identical time could possibly be from distinctive staging too. Photograph may be more true than actuality now with digital digicam, photoshop and AI manipulation.

Can {a photograph} change our notion of an occasion?
Deana Nastic : Yes.

Is images testimony or a type of manipulation?
Deana Nastic : Now is each. In the previous images was principally proof of journalism. Now with digital digicam, photoshop, AI manipulation, actuality can simply manipulated.

What makes {photograph}?
Deana Nastic : When nice concept, highly effective story, mild, composition and topic all align in a singular timeless second.

In your opinion, what high quality is important to be photographer?
Deana Nastic : Creative thoughts and eye.

How do you select your initiatives?
Deana Nastic : From a private expertise.

How would you describe your inventive course of?
Deana Nastic : Spontaneous. I do have an preliminary concept about what and the way I want to do a photoshoot, however I all the time dwell an area for surprising “happy accidents”. I’m on the lookout for a magic second that creates distinctive, timeless pictures distinctive that may’t be made once more.

An upcoming undertaking that’s significantly near your coronary heart?
Deana Nastic : Project is known as: “The end of Everything”. Taking pictures of my 23 12 months daughter that’s shifting to Europe  and leaving out our residence for the primary time.

The Pearson you want to {photograph}?
Deana Nastic : Yogi Yamamoto.

The particular person by whom you want to be photographed?
Deana Nastic : Albert Watson.

An important images ebook?
Deana Nastic : “Photographic Works” 2013-2025, by Marcus Schaefer, who’s mixing images, portray and sculpting in his images.

What is the final {photograph} you took?
Deana Nastic : My daughter for my new undertaking that I engaged on.

On social media, are you extra Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok-and why?
Deana Nastic : I m not a lot into social media. I’m solely on Instagram to showcase my work -photography.

What has modified in images because the rise of social media?
Deana Nastic : With an increase of social media we received mediocre images, with out inventive contact and depth.

An Instagram account everybody ought to fallow?
Deana Nastic : I wouldn’t be capable of choose just one. There are some nice inspiring photographers and artists to be adopted. Roger Ballen, Casper Faassen, Marcus Schaefer and others, who’re combining drawing, portray and sculpting with images.

What is your view on AI?
Deana Nastic : Geoffrey Hinton (father of AI) warned  that AI might exchange all types of mental work.
Which I agree.

Color or black and white?
Deana Nastic : Black and white.

Natural mild or synthetic  mild?
Deana Nastic : Natural.

Which metropolis appears probably the most photogenic to you?
Deana Nastic : Paris.

The metropolis, nation, or tradition you dream of discovering?
Deana Nastic : Japan.

A spot you by no means tire of?
Deana Nastic : Hotel Costes in Paris.

The picture that, for you, represents the present state of the world?
Deana Nastic : Water Series by Edward Burtynsky.

In your opinion, what’s lacking in immediately’ world?
Deana Nastic : Human contact in addition to social gathering.

If good existed, would you ask him to pose for you’d go for a selfie with?
Deana Nastic : Selfie.

Your favorite drug?
Deana Nastic : Never traded any drug.

Your greatest technique to disconnect?
Deana Nastic : Dancing.

Your newest insanity?
Deana Nastic : Needing Europe in my life I’ve purchased a spot in France, for my sanity.

Your best skilled extravaganza?
Deana Nastic : Transitioning from portray to images.

A occupation you wouldn’t have favored to pursue?
Deana Nastic : Running a restaurant enterprise.

Which query unsettles you probably the most?
Deana Nastic : Your favorite drug?

The very last thing you probably did for the primary time?
Deana Nastic : Travel in a small plain.

Your best remorse?
Deana Nastic : Leaving Athens, Greece after two years.

If you needed to begin once more?
Deana Nastic : I’d be a sculptor.

If I might manage your superb dinner, who could be on the desk?
Deana Nastic : My husband.

What do you want individuals to say about you… after you might be gone?
Deana Nastic : What individuals will take into consideration me shall be anyway, an opinion formed by particular person notion.

The one factor individuals completely should learn about you?
Deana Nastic : She was a laughter.

A last phrase?
Deana Nastic : Searching.