photography, object, glass printing, concrete
«Outline of Presence”—a photographic project examining urban mutual visibility. Over several months, the artist photographs the residents of a neighboring apartment building from her own apartment window. By occupying the same architectural niche, she becomes part of the same visual regime as the people across the facade.The balcony transforms into a liminal space, simultaneously belonging to the house and the city. Here, private life is exposed to view, yet it doesn’t become entirely public. Architecture does more than just separate people—it creates a distinct form of closeness where strangers daily appear within a field of mutual sight.
The architecture of the modern city transforms mutual visibility into a form of proximity among strangers.
Drawing from Ariella Azulay’s concept of a civic contract in photography, the project shifts focus to the very structure of urban space. The gaze emerges not as an anomaly, but as a consequence of the city’s architectural organization, where the boundaries between the public and private are constantly proving unstable.
Stripped of context and history, the figures become mere contours of presence. The distance between them is filled with imagined projections: by observing repeated fragments of someone else’s daily life, the artist inevitably imbues them with character, experience, and an inner life, while simultaneously recognizing that she herself could become the subject of such a gaze. The project explores not so much the possibility of seeing the Other, but the space between the communal and the intimate—a space where photography no longer confirms knowledge but reveals the limits of mutuality.
PROJECT STATUS: The photo series was shot in 2020–2021. Currently, the project is in the process of developing its exhibition form. The plan involves creating an installation consisting of fifteen vertical glass panels, each approximately 15 × 20 cm, set within a concrete base with equal spacing between them.
Printing directly onto the glass preserves the materiality of looking through a window and allows the images to partially transmit and overlap, replicating the spatial logic of mutual visibility that underlies the project.
MULTIPLICITY AND REPETITION:Repetition emerges in the project as a property of the urban environment. The architectural module reproduces identical conditions of visibility, transforming numerous individual presences into a unified rhythm of urban daily life.It can also be examined under the category «City and Subject»: in the project, the subject is considered part of the urban infrastructure of visibility. Architecture not only organizes space but also defines the modes of presence, observation, and imagined proximity between strangers.
Support within the scope of the project will allow for the realization of the object and the completion of its material form.
BASE ESTIMATE: Printing on 15 glasses (15×20 cm) — 18,000 ₽ Tempered glass (15 pieces) — 10,000 ₽ Fabrication of the concrete base — 8,000 ₽ File preparation and test print — 5,000 ₽ Mounting materials — 3,000 ₽ Total: 44,000 ₽