Diana Markosian: Santa Barbara Limited-Edition Portfolio

Diana Markosian’s Santa Barbara recreates the story of her family’s journey from post-Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s. Coinciding with the book's publication, this special, limited-edition portfolio features three exquisitely produced images from the series, encased in a luxurious, lilac clothbound folder. This exclusive set is available in an edition of ten only.

The project pulls together staged scenes, film stills, and family pictures in an innovative and compelling hybrid of personal and documentary storytelling. In it, the artist grapples with the reality that her mother, seeking a better life for herself and her two young children, came to America as a mail-order bride. Markosian’s mother chose her future husband because he lived in Santa Barbara, a city made famous in Russia when the 1980s soap opera of that name became the first American television show broadcast there.

Weaving together reenactments by actors, archival images, stills from the original Santa Barbara TV show, Markosian reconsiders her family’s story from her mother’s perspective, relating to her for the first time as a woman, and coming to terms with the profound sacrifices she made to become an American.

Three Pigment Prints, presented in a clothbound folder
Image Size: 9 1/2 x 14 1/8 inches
Paper Size: 11 1/2 x 16 1/8 inches
Folder Size: 11 1/8 x 15 3/4 inches
Edition of 10 + 2 AP
Signed and numbered by the artist

*Price to increase as edition sells through*

Diana Markosian (b. 1989, Moscow) is a Russian American photographer of Armenian descent. Her photographs have been published in National Geographic, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. She holds a Master of Science from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her work is represented by Galerie Les filles du calvaire in Paris.