Anastasia

Anastasia Oss was born in 1995 in Trento in the Trentino-South Tirole region – in the North-eastern part of Italy. She spent her childhood as a countryside child, making of its peaceful forests and magnificent mountains her garden. It is in this quiet part of Italy and with her first gifts of disposable cameras that she started to take pictures of anything that would prove a bit of interest or beauty in her eyes. The light of the most common thing had to be captured with the idea that it could look beautiful if taken through a certain angle.
 With her curiosity growing boundless and the quality of her pictures getting better with practice, her father offered Anastasia her first digital SLR camera at the age of 14. From this moment something that had seemed natural so far, something other people would describe as a hobby, took a different dimension in her mind and encouraged Anastasia to open her eyes to a new art: Photography.
 A childhood hobby became a growing passion driven by curiosity and an unstoppable research of Beauty. From nature to towns, animals to objects, everything had the power to become elegant and worth of interest. When the switch to post-school studies showed itself, choosing photography appeared as an evidence. Therefor, and with Anastasia's family support, she entered the Libera Academia di Belle Arti (LABA) of Brescia in 2014. There she discovered many photography idols of which she chose a few that were especially inspiring for her: Tim Walker, Kristian Schuller, Ryan McGinley,...
 Anastasia's artistic obsession evolved during her studies. Was it the rising positive feedback about her talent and hard work or was it a personal challenge that drove Anastasia to choose the subject she was finding the most diverse and complex? Perhaps it was just the part she liked the most... Portraits, the research of Beauty in human models. Not only were humans so different from each other, capable of the best and the worse, so hardly understandable but easily imitable... They added a new spicy detail that other subjects could not: the living interaction between the model and the photographer.
 As Anastasia's art was growing more mature, this interaction took more importance in her eyes and more space in her works. Without the budget to afford her idol's expensive set designs, she needed to find her own way of doing things. Henceforth, her models needed to be ready to fall into cold lakes, hug fishes and other animals or try to make a beautiful use from everyday items (chairs, cutleries, food, ...), all the spirited photographer would choose. Their positions had to evolve from basic once to extreme, miss-placed and contorted.
 Driven by her passion that was getting always more precise, Anastasia participated to several exhibitions, and contests. She was selected as the first prize winner of the contest “Black and white music” issued by Youmore Morcelli Giovani. She was also selected for the first edition of “Pergine Arte Giovane” in August 2016 with four other artists. Her works were also published several times on magazines such as Promo Elegant and Feroce, some of which were also selected for the cover story. 
 After graduating with “110 e lode” (maximal note with merit) in 2017, Anastasia decided to take her art and her whole life to a different level. What better city than the one of Anastasia's great source of inspiration – Tim Walker? From a child roaming in the countryside around Trento to a photographer life in London. If before the models and stylists were chosen amongst close entourage, the new once were freelance or professionals from London agencies and art industry.
There, confronted to a completely different society, she chose to connect even more her works with topics such as nature, pollution and global warming, freedom of the self. Everything without forgetting the beginning of her passion: the research of beauty everywhere around, in the simplest thing as in the darkest context. This notion is deeply explored in her art, both in terms of “technique” (colours, shapes, space, layout, ...) and purely conceptual. For Anastasia, it leads to the conclusion that Beauty is everywhere around us, even in the ugliest things, ... if we are ready to see it.