TITLE: Uniqueness

I looked around at my female friends and acquaintances of my own age and older. I saw that all this was happening not only to me but that this was a natural progression. Looking at them, I saw that life marches on and is in no hurry to get anywhere. Everyone evolves, refines and fulfills herself, works, creates a family; I saw that they were all beautiful, with their own merits and their individuality. It made me look at myself in a different way, let myself go. I wanted to capture it on camera. The doors to self-awareness have opened to me through other women. They have become an example for me. Their openness and honesty, their ability to overcome their fear of the camera, of me and of themselves, and at the same time, my fear of them, naked and trusting me, made me look at life in a different way. I have accepted the fact that I am a woman, not a teenager; that for self-fulfillment, I just need to take a camera and shoot, and that to have an “imperfect” body or a few wrinkles is normal and not at all scary. Thoughts about diets and old age have also evaporated. My anxieties have begun to disappear. And I felt all this while looking at the photos of my models.

All the participants of the project are women who are beautiful and real, who are successful in their vocation, be it work, children, family, or creativity; they are all over 30, and each of them possesses self-confidence, the pursuit of excellence, the acceptance of herself as she is in real life, as well as energy and desire to change something when they need it.


AUTHOR: Anna Matveeva (Russian Federation)

- was born on 16 April 1985 in Moscow

- graduated from the All-Russian Institute of Cinematography named after S.A. Gerasimov in 2007; major: Film and Television Producer

- photographer since 2009

- worked as production manager in 2002–10 on:

In the First Circle (dir. G. Panfilov),
Film Festival (dir. V. Pichul),
The Banishment (dir. A. Zvyagintsev),
Elena (dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev),
Kromov (dir. A. Razenkov), etc.


- has worked as a photographer on film sets since 2010, on:

Zhukov (dir. A. Muradov),
Leviathan (dir. A. Zvyagintsev),
Loveless (dir. A. Zvyagintsev)