Vladimir Antaki on Fstoppers

vladimir-antaki.com

Vladimir Antaki was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1980. He grew up in Paris and studied art history and film studies at La Sorbonne. In 2003, Antaki moved to Montreal, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual and media arts from UQÀM in 2007. Antaki specializes in intimate portraits and stories with an uncanny ability to get to his subjectsʼ core.

For his series, The Guardians, Antaki traveled across Europe, the Middle East and America, photographing shopkeepers or “Guardians.” These Guardians are keepers of what Antaki terms “urban temples,” unique spaces which, in an age of cookie-cutter, corporate shops, hearken back to an earlier time and mode of urban life. Antaki creates visually arresting portraits of the Guardians in their urban temples that make the viewer connect to the beauty of these often forgotten spaces. Antaki believes that these temples are the heart and soul of every city; they are what give the urban centre its uniqueness in time and place. There is also a duty of memory associated with these spaces. As so many of them are closing, it falls to artists such as Antaki to preserve their memory.

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