Based on True Story
Polina Davydenko
Documenting pre-selected groups or phenomena is a typical habit and strategy in photography. The photographer becomes a hunter of images, which he composes, compiles, and manipulates into his own story. He or she searches for own narrative within the media – models that can be used for aestheticization.
The concept of Based on True Story is about a photographer looking for clues in a scattered story with no set boundaries. Is it “performance for the camera” or found situation? Because of the absence of narration and introduction text, a chaotic set of pictures is open for reading and interpretation. It captures the route that is not articulated or marked on any map.
Polina Davydenko works mostly with the medium of photography overlapping with the media of video, audio and text. The key theme of her work is narrative and its various forms. She focuses on human-animal relationships and cultural stereotypes related to the issue. These become the starting point for playing out other contexts, which the author visually sensitively connects into one disturbing message.
Polina was born in Ukraine, but since childhood she lives in Czech Republic. She completed study at the Ivars Gravlejs’ Photography Studio at the FFA BUT in Brno. She has furthered her education at KASK in Gent, FAMU in Prague and at the FFA’s Studio Environment.