3rd Prize Winner
Photography Award

Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2024

Stasia Schmidt

Title:

“Floe”

Medium & Dimensions:

Digital Photography, Canon R5, Canon RF 70-200 f/4

About the Artist

Stasia Schmidt (b.1978) is an award winning, fine art photographer based in Calgary, Alberta. Her landscapes and portraits show attention to simplicity and form. She is drawn to unexpected surrealism within the natural environment, and throughout the photographic process Stasia works to layer subversive femininity with stark reality. Self taught, she draws from a deep well of inspiration that includes a love of music, dance, science fiction, and adventure. The medium of photography is her chosen method of exploring creative boundaries and challenging expectations in order to create provocative, vivid, and resonant art.

“Floe”: is one of 10 pieces of a larger body of work – “Ephemerality.” Stasia created this image, and Ephemerality as a way to explore her own femininity while out adventuring in environments that have traditionally been considered the domain of men. Harsh, bleak landscapes call to her in a way that makes her feel vividly alive. There are many images of places like this, usually featuring a man in outdoor gear, staring off into the distance. Stasia’s vision with “Floe” was to prove to herself and others that feminine presence also belongs. She created this piece with her camera on a tripod, and arranged herself on the iceberg remnant that had washed up on the shores of Disko Island in Greenland. Happily, a large iceberg was stationed in the background long enough for her to compose and create an image she loves.