"‘POWER OF SEEING’
From Fashion to Photography"

Louis Vuitton, Prada, Saint Laurent - I have dedicated 15 years to working for these giants of fashion industry heading Retail Direction in Dubai and Middle East. Opening stores in the region, fashion shows in Paris and Milan, travels, my life was a constant move.

Two major passions held me back in fashion for so long - my love to creative genius and people. I guess that ability to see through people and sensibility can explain why I became a portraitist where main focus is always a person and one’s feelings.

Decision to leave fashion was in search of inner freedom and desire to understand how I can be living my life outside of someone’s else direction and pave my own path fundamentally based on my own vision I quit to explore, lived in NY and Mexico for a bit, until I had an unexpected realization. I woke up one day with an odd idea to get a camera. As soon as I looked through the viewfinder, I was captivated by the ability to capture people’s emotions and stories within a single frame. It felt like a portal where my intuitive vision and perception of the world could match its visual proof in a shape of a photograph.

It was a sensational experience, and after initially resisting this irrational idea, I eventually embraced my destiny as a photographer.

Growing up as the daughter of a photographer I was raised in a house with a darkroom where mystery of bringing captures to life seemed to be a magic in my father’s hands. House was full of film cameras, umbrellas, tests and prints of people who I felt lived with us, so vivid were their portraits that my dad took.

Black and white aesthetic of era of classic movies, close proximity to creative fashion houses, family history, my endless exploration of myself and relationships with people, is what influenced my portraiture.

Creators are unapologetic so is being a creator of your own life story..

‘POWER OF SEEING’

Photography for me is a philosophy, act and art.

What I see is a texture made of my experiences, it’s an architecture of my soul.

I have realized that through my lens I can show the essence, dive deeper then just composition or a good angle. That’s how the name” Power of Seeing” was given to the philosophy of my photography and exhibition that has just opened in iconic building of Zaha Hadid in February.

‘Power of seeing’ is about seeing beyond what meets the eye. Remember “Avatar’s’ ‘I see you”? This phrase is a leitmotif of the movie and my exhibition. It’s about seeing each other not only using your sensory vision but on a deeper level, using an archive of experiences as a prism and love as a fundamental core of a viewer. Seeing is an acknowledging of one’s existence, presence and beauty.

Through few different series of portraits I want to show vastness of human soul in connection to the cityscape, movement, and feelings, to highlight how powerful is a freedom of artistic, sensual and emotional expression. That’s how we find each other, how we connect, through displaying feelings and delicate imprints of our characters. This is what I aim to immortalize, freeze that inner state in that one moment.

Zoom in and zoom out on life of a hero on the scale of a big city such as New York and Dubai and juxtapose city’s architecture to one soul that becomes the center of universe and my view among skyscrapers, buzz of the city life and people. Endow each soul with greatness in its own authentic experiences and moments.

My heroes are from very different spheres of life: dancers, people of art, designers, leaders in business areas, but here you just meet pure essence of each without a social status. Because my Power of seeing is seeing what we are regardless of any social, religious or cultural roles, I leave it outside of my lens.

One part of my exhibition is a tribute to Dubai, city that shaped me as personality and professional over past 16 years. When I started to photograph women in iconic Dubai gems, I was fascinated how true and vulnerable emotions of my heroines were in unity with the city’s places of power. There is a feeling of being home. And it is through my lens and my heroes destinies I can show how deep and profound is the city of Dubai and people living here are. I draw a connection between a human soul and city’s energy and aim to show how authentic it can be. My muses live through the best and brightest moments of their lives here, going through tremendous changes at times falling and turning their faces to the sky with questions and then rising like phoenix despite all odds. If you imagine this energy exchange as an ongoing process, you will be able to feel how dense and deep the air is, how many destinies are interlaced with one another behind those cold facades of skyscrapers. And this city blankets you in the futuristic shapes and empowers you through the grandness of its architecture safeguarding your fragility.

‘POWER OF SEEING’ - SOLO EXHIBITION OF NATALYA URMANOVA

Show took place in February at ME Dubai Hotel designed by Zaha Hadid, a heaven of architecture marvel nestled in the heart of Dubai. This collaboration between ME Dubai and Natalya Urmanova fosters creativity and art and promotes artistic expression,

It created a symbiotic synthesis with ME Dubai’s fashion forward architecture and contemporary curves, echoing Zaha Hadid’s interest in human’s connection to space and nature as Natalya’s work portrait architecture of human souls and speaks about her journey from fashion to photography.

The space has been hugely transformed with artist’s portraits accentuating how an eye that looks for timelessness in black and white can coexist with futuristic yet iconic shapes.

Exhibition featured 4 main zones of contemplation: Perpetual Beauty, Architecture of the soul, Intricate act of being art and Life as is, kaleidoscope of unique stories through one main question how we can stay in contact with our essence as human beings despite the collective speed and illusive ‘indifference’ of a metropolis, promoting that self-connection through a courage of expressing all spectrum of emotions through mild and raw, sensitive and rough.

Photographer NATALYA URMANOVA

Model Power of seeing the unseen to one’s eye.

Dubai 2007-2024

urmanova.imagery@gmail.com

+971501891775