Pirate's Cove

But, we’re all going to die

‘This is all pink and attractive, but we are going to die’: Anastasia Samoylova on photographing Florida’s climate anxiety

Russian-born American photographer Anastasia Samoylova loves “Barbie.” Not only did she wear a hot pink suit to the opening of her own photography exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October, she also insisted on taking her teenage son to see Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film — considering it essential feminist viewing. “Is it perfect? No. But it addresses very complicated and divisive subjects,” Samoylova told CNN in a video call from her home in Florida. She recalls how Margot Robbie’s title character, Barbie, stops the euphoric dance floor in its tracks when she wonders aloud, “do you guys ever think about dying?” “That’s literally what I’ve been trying to communicate,” said Samoylova. “This is all pink and attractive, but we are going to die.”

Samoylova, whose work is currently on display at both the Met Museum in New York and the Saatchi Gallery in London, has garnered critical acclaim for her subtle, anxiety-inducing images of Florida’s collapsing pastel-pink landscapes. Her 2019 series “Flood Zone” — a nod to the unnervingly bureaucratic label that can often dictate life or death — is a surreal chronicle of an area decaying in real time. (snip)

The insidious, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it approach to her observational photography is intentional. Several years of capturing political extremism, gentrification and environmental disintegration has given Samoylova time to think about how to package disastrous messaging. “How do you communicate these very complex subjects and make them relatable?” she asks. “The trickiest part is to not make them off-putting.” Come for the pink sidewalks that characterize the streets of Miami — as many tourists do — and stay for the subsequent feelings of existential dread. It’s a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, she says. “(Climate change) is stigmatized, and it’s become divisive, at least where I live in the US, especially in Florida. And who knows, it’s likely going to be erased from the conversation again.”

There’s so much cult doom in the article it’s hard to know where to begin. And end. Apparently, a gator hanging in the swamps is climate doom. And

See, concrete never eroded in a low lying state with lots of water, both fresh and salt, with high humidity, and lots of storms, before you drove a fossil fueled vehicle.