An Ideal Harmony: “Fox Series” by Alexandra Bochkareva

Alexandra Bochkareva is a portrait and fine art photographer. She was born and grew up in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. She now works in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In early childhood she “fell in love with art” through drawing and painting. Occupied with her studies at college and university, she abandoned art for few years, but after giving a birth to a daughter, she renewed her commitment to it, this time as a photographer. Her father’s “Zenit” was her first camera, so her earliest images were made on film. She started to use old manual Helios lenses in her art at the beginning of her involvement in photography.

She has a fondness for natural light, so most of her works are en plein air. Her favourite places to create her images are forests and parks and on the beach at Neva Bay in the Finland Gulf. The forest and the sea inspire her most of all.

The main things she tries to show in her photographs are the irreproachable beauty of nature and a vision of an ideal harmony between humanity and the natural world.

She is always searching for new faces, for muses who can inspire her; but there are some models with whom she has worked for a long time, like Polina, Maria, and Olga in her “Fox” series. She holds these women in high regard, not for their beauty only, but for their willingness to do what is asked of them in their modeling roles, for their bravery and self-assurance which comes through in every image, and for the special atmosphere they bring to the entire creative process.

In Alexandra’ camera bag: her camera Canon EOS 650D and her lenses – a Helios 77m-4, a Helios 44m, a Canon ef 1.4 50mm and a Canon ef 2.8 20mm.