Damira Tagaeva V. 2
The theatrical photography of Damira Tagaeva is profoundly unique and provocative. She conveys themes of witchcraft, sorcery, gothic and mafia-based narratives, erotica, arthouse playfulness, and rebellious vogue. Through carefully constructed and selected costume design, lucid directed acting, dramatic perspectives and compositions, provocative narratives and innuendos, careful lighting, and analogue digital tools, she creates a world rich in breaking the chains of the mundane and familiarity. These unfamiliar photographs reveal characters, mostly women, who challenge traditional feminine roles, such as portraying the mythology of a witch as a cool, enlightened entity and anti-heroine.
From scenes which appear like the recovery from a victorious fist fight to witches summoning crows and turning the sun into a burning otherworldly portal, Damira Tagaeva carefully hand-tailors narratives which intrigue us with intense curiosity and a deep sense of thrilling suspense worthy of high-production-value theatre. Damira’s photographs are more similar to theatre than cinema because these sequences seem sequential and segmented as if they were almost like storyboard plannings for a grand opus play.
These witch and warlock sensibilities or the frolicing of a playful box-head cat character who roams the streets in motion and revels in a park which ironically does not permit dogs, convey a profound sense of rebellion and free-spirited narrative. Damira Tagaeva’s narrative are not only playful, ironic, absurd, funny, and horrifying, but they are also based in sincere conveyances of freedom and unique individuality. Such conceptual narratives in her works reveal a sense of youthful spirit, and exploration of environments, whether urban or natural, through the eyes of characters who enchant, haunt, frolic, and ‘manage’ their surroundings.
Damira Tagaeva’s photography could be described as a dark veil retracting from a theatrical stage to reveal immersive method actors frightening and entertaining their audience simultaneously. These lucid sequences in witchcraft and sorcery-based themes especially are amongst the most intriguing of her works. Here she poignantly communicates the role of the witch through precise actions, such as crossing candles in a V-shape in Victorian-esque costume with an ominous black ring on the actor’s finger. Other photographs are more enchanted, such as a fire witch carrying a haunted, animated ballon within a pond. Whether overt or subtle, each of these framed shots reveal a profound accentuation of character which breaks the two-dimensionality of the known classification of a witch. Damira’s witches are enlightened figures with feelings of sorrow, anguish, and even manic excitement. The witches are communicated elements of liberation.
One of the very best photographers in the entire extensive database of the Point Pleasant Publishing catalogue, Damira Tagaeva offers provocative and theatrical approaches to conventional contemporary narrative. Her actors are more than characters, they are a jubilee of individuality and freedom, conceptually conveying life and fluidity. In such a regard, Damira Tagaeva’s photography feels very much alive and thriving.
