Eva Zar

Eva Zar is an artist/curator with Russian roots but grew up in Vienna, Austria. She moved to New York in 2016, where she currently lives and breathes. Awarded a Michael C. Toth scholarship and a Provost scholarship she started her Master of Fine Arts with a major in photography at the renowned Parsons School of Design in 2016. Her roots influence her on a daily basis, shaping her workflow and style. Zar also has an obsession with fruits, good conversations, and inappropriate details of daily life. Her diverse roster of clients includes Audi, Coca Cola, Ecco, i-D magazine, Indie magazine, Left Boy, Warner Music Germany, Vice and many more. Her artwork has been shown in numerous places around the globe. Furthermore Eva Zar was featured in magazines such as Bitchslap, Broadly, Designtaxi, Fubiz, i-D, Paper, Sand & Such and many more. She was also named to be one of the “20 most interesting photographers of Austria“ by The Gap magazine.

Right now, Eva Zar is continuing her MFA at Parsons and releasing her first book called Say My Name. Her book is a selection of her works from 2015 and 2016. Zar captures those around her who spend much of their lives online. She exposes and celebrates the background work that goes into virtual performances. Exploring the intense and fragile moment before the staging of a selfie, the messy room that gets cropped out of the frame, and the way we create personal space when nobody watches, Zar takes photographs of intimate realities that no one sees when viewing a social media feed.

Take Self Care

In a world where your identity is defined by being able to produce, self care is something that is so regularly disregarded. It’s always second place. Even right now as I’m writing this text, extremely tired, waiting for another flight after sleeping less then five hours, after flying back in forth for the tenth time in ten days, it’s still more important to produce than to close my eyes for a minute and rest. So, close your eyes. It’s nice to be by yourself. Imagine the mystical place you would like to be right now. Forget the stress. Not kidding. Go where I went to rest. Rest.

This project was made in Marseille, France for the Studio Vortex Residency in Arles, France. The residency was directed by the renowned Magnum photographer Antoine D‘Agata. This project was exhibited at the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography and Film in Arles, France.

To view more of Eva’s work please visit her website.