Anna Kulikova is a street photographer. While studying in Nizhny Novgorod, she picked up a camera and began taking pictures. She started her career as a street photographer in 2017. Her interest in street photography is founded on the sincerity and spontaneity of this genre. Anna's inspiration lies in the architecture and the unique atmosphere of the urban environment. Streets and the people in them are the center of her creativity, and Anna tells her stories by capturing them coming to life.

I have chosen photography as my primary medium because it allows me to maintain a certain distance while exploring the inner experiences of a person without disrupting their integrity. I am drawn to the fragile workings of memory, the topography of solitude, and the multilayered nature of the personal and the collective within the urban landscape. My practice combines introspection with cinematic narrativity: many of my series are structured as stories where characters and spaces unfold their own dramaturgy. For instance, in the series Public Solitude, I capture moments when social roles dissolve and a person is left alone in a public space; for me, this is a way to glimpse authenticity freed from familiar scripts. I follow a guiding principle of "delicate" work, aiming for minimal interference. The image, after all, should emerge from the situation itself, not from my direction.

I am only beginning to rethink the medium of photography, which is why I increasingly push the image beyond the plane and employ installation-based solutions. This helps me articulate the concept of each project more precisely and engage with the dramaturgy of space. In Reflections That Do Not Exist, a shattered mirror and reflective surfaces turn dementia into a sensory model of memory fragmentation. The installation Behind the Frame constructs a portal-like structure where a random street gaze collides with the subject’s self-representation, calling into question the stability of the observer’s position. This allows me to highlight the duality of reality and subjective perception — that delicate transitional moment when a spontaneous gesture is frozen and space opens up for interpretation or rethinking.

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