Artist’s Statement:
In 2006, I read that sub-Saharan Africa would soon be home to more than twenty million aids orphans, then met a family of children in a remote paradisiacal village in the Rakai District of Uganda. I have returned to this village for four periods of two months, and have allowed these children to guide me through their world. Documenting what it feels like to be a kid in the epicenter of the aids pandemic, I’ve attended school, gardened, “swam,” and foraged with them for both fruit and insects. As I complete this body of work, my final stretch includes the creation of a series of deeply emotive contextual images, incorporating landscape and portraiture into a new aesthetic that speaks to our contemporary condition.
Artist’s Bio:
Anna Boyiazis is a documentary photographer based between Southern California and East Africa. Her storytelling suspends the illusions of human separation. Through her work, she aims to elicit compassion and bring our shared humanity to the fore. Exhibitions include Prix Bayeux-Calvados des Correspondants de Guerre, the Havana Biennial and Arte Fiera: Women in Multimedia. She has been selected for the Canon-sponsored VII Masterclass with Antonin Kratochvil, the Eddie Adams Workshop and RISC Training Nairobi; shortlisted for the Canon Female Photojournalist Award; and recipient of both the Eddie Adams Workshop Los Angeles Times Assignment Award and City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship. Her work has been recognized by ASMP, CENTER, Médecins Sans Frontières, Photocrati Fund and Prix de la Photographie Paris.
Anna’s involvement with photography deepened in 2006, inspiring a mid-career transition. She began her career designing a variety of publications—predominantly books—in collaboration with international art and architecture organizations. Projects included the design of Morphosis, architecture monograph by Thom Mayne (Phaidon Press), and Paradise Cage: Kiki Smith and Coop Himmelblau (The Museum of Contemporary Art [MOCA], Los Angeles). Anna taught at Art Center College of Design and the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and served a teaching fellowship at the Yale University School of Art, as Head Designer at MOCA and as Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. Her work was recognized by The American Center for Design, the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and Communication Arts. Her work is in the permanent collections of the AIGA Archives at the Denver Art Museum, UCLA Arts Library Artists’ Book Collection, Yale University Art + Architecture Library and Yale University Sterling Memorial Library Arts of the Book Collection.
Anna earned an MFA from the Yale University School of Art and a BA from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.