Deana Nastic: Photography Beyond Painting
In Deana Nastic‘s work, light is never used simply to illuminate the world; it reshapes its contours. It does not reveal it transforms. Rather than fixing reality, it unsettles our certainties about it. Her images move beyond documentation to become sensory experiences, where the visible trembles, forms dissolve, and physical presence gives way to something more elusive and inward. Rejecting descriptive photography, Nastic explores the fragile threshold where the figure emerges even as it disappears, suspended between appearance and erasure, memory and imagination. This distinctive vision stems from an equally singular artistic journey. Trained first as a painter before turning to photography, Deana Nastic never truly abandoned her original language she merely exchanged her tools. The camera did not replace the paintbrush; it became a contemporary counterpart. Where others pursue precision, she embraces ambiguity. Where photography has traditionally promised evidence, she seeks suggestion. Her practice inhabits a fertile territory where disciplinary boundaries lose their relevance. Long exposures, subtle camera movements, and an almost choreographic command of light produce images that appear less captured than painted. Black and white is fundamental to this process. Freed from the distractions of colour, the image regains an almost mineral density, composed of transparency, veils, and breath. Bodies emerge not as fixed presences but as luminous traces, suspended between materiality and disappearance. Yet to define her work solely through the legacy of Pictorialism would be limiting. While the softness of her images occasionally recalls charcoal drawings, ink washes, or Symbolist experiments, Nastic’s visual language is unmistakably contemporary. Her blur is never nostalgic; it questions the very act of seeing. At a time when digital photography relentlessly pursues ever greater sharpness, resolution, and control, she chooses imperfection, controlled chance, and ambiguity instead. Her photographs resist immediate consumption, inviting a slower, more contemplative gaze.
The human body occupies a central place within this investigation. Dancers, nudes, and portraits are never treated as subjects to be represented, but as surfaces of transformation. They become spaces where light behaves like a living material. Outlines dissolve, identities fade, and what remains is a presence that is emotional rather than physical. Movement is no longer depicted it becomes the very substance of the image. What unfolds before the lens is not performance, but the gradual dissolution of form into pure energy. This aesthetic of effacement lends her work an almost metaphysical dimension. Deana Nastic’s photography does not seek to arrest time, but to make its passage perceptible. Each image seems to contain multiple moments layered upon one another, as though memory itself had settled gently onto the photographic surface. Rather than capturing a single instant, her photographs reveal duration. More than an exploration of photography’s formal possibilities, Deana Nastic’s work is a meditation on perception itself. It reminds us that seeing is not merely the act of identifying forms, but of embracing uncertainty, silence, and absence. In this constant oscillation between appearance and disappearance, between photography and painting, she has developed a work of remarkable coherence, one in which the photographic image ceases to record the visible and instead becomes the sensory experience of all that ultimately escapes the eye.
Website : https://www.gadcollection.com/fr/g/photographes/deana-nastic/
Instagram : @noemiaprada
Represented by Galerie GADCOLLECTION, 4 rue du Pont Louis-Philippe – 75004 Paris
@galeriegadcollection
Your first photographic trigger?
Deana Nastic : Taking a photograph of a nude model with a natural window light falling on her back.
A photographic memory from your childhood?
Deana Nastic : Ski trip with my dad.
The camera of your childhood?
Deana Nastic : Canon film camera.
The one you use today?
Deana Nastic : Hasselblad x 1 D II and Nikon D 800.
The man or woman of the image who inspired you?
Deana Nastic : Steve Jobs by Albert Watson. Shot was taken when Albert Watson told Steve Jobs: Think of all people that told you No.
The image you wish you had taken?
Deana Nastic : Image of my father in his studio, where he spent days and nights sketching and rendering his architectural plans.
The one that moved you the most?
Deana Nastic : “Grace Portrait” by Erwin Olaf, from Grief Series.
And the one that made you angry?
Deana Nastic : “Death of Alan Kurdi by Nilufer Demir.
Which photograph changed the world?
Deana Nastic : “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange.
A key image in your personal pantheon?
Deana Nastic : “Circle of Life”, I took few years ago.
Which photograph changed your world?
Deana Nastic : I can mentioned only my own photograph that changed my world. ”Silhouette V” that was selected by a European gallery to be exhibited. Since then, I have been spending more time in Europe while exhibiting in various galleries.
What interests you most in an image?
Deana Nastic : Feeling, which can derive from a powerful story that is behind an image.
What details you look in a face, landscape or object?
Deana Nastic : Eyes in a face, sky in a landscape and light on object.
Elliot Erwitt sad: Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretative.” Do you agree?
Deana Nastic : Yes.
In your opinion, can technique sometimes take precedence over emotion in photography?
Deana Nastic : Absolutely yes.
Is beauty in photography, for you, purely aesthetic?
Deana Nastic : Not at all.
What elements can make silence visible in a photograph?
Deana Nastic : Body language as well as story behind image.
Does the uniqueness of a photograph come from the moment or from staging? Can a photograph be truer than reality?
Deana Nastic : The uniqueness of a photograph comes from the moment, but at the same time could be from unique staging too. Photograph can be truer than reality now with digital camera, photoshop and AI manipulation.
Can a photograph change our perception of an event?
Deana Nastic : Yes.
Is photography testimony or a form of manipulation?
Deana Nastic : Now is both. In the past photography was mostly evidence of journalism. Now with digital camera, photoshop, AI manipulation, reality can easily manipulated.
What makes a good photograph?
Deana Nastic : When great idea, powerful story, light, composition and subject all align in a unique timeless moment.
In your opinion, what quality is necessary to be a good photographer?
Deana Nastic : Creative mind and eye.
How do you choose your projects?
Deana Nastic : From a personal experience.
How would you describe your creative process?
Deana Nastic : Spontaneous. I do have an initial idea about what and how I would like to do a photoshoot, but I always live a space for unexpected “happy accidents”. I’m looking for a magic moment that creates unique, timeless images unique that can’t be made again.
An upcoming project that is particularly close to your heart?
Deana Nastic : Project is called: “The end of Everything”. Taking images of my 23 year daughter that is moving to Europe and leaving out our home for the first time.
The Pearson you would like to photograph?
Deana Nastic : Yogi Yamamoto.
The person by whom you would like to be photographed?
Deana Nastic : Albert Watson.
An essential photography book?
Deana Nastic : “Photographic Works” 2013-2025, by Marcus Schaefer, who is blending photography, painting and sculpting in his photography.
What is the last photograph you took?
Deana Nastic : My daughter for my new project that I working on.
On social media, are you more Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok-and why?
Deana Nastic : I m not much into social media. I’m only on Instagram to showcase my work -photography.
What has changed in photography since the rise of social media?
Deana Nastic : With a rise of social media we got mediocre photography, without artistic touch and depth.
An Instagram account everyone should fallow?
Deana Nastic : I wouldn’t be able to pick only one. There are some great inspiring photographers and artists to be followed. Roger Ballen, Casper Faassen, Marcus Schaefer and others, who are combining drawing, painting and sculpting with photography.
What is your view on AI?
Deana Nastic : Geoffrey Hinton (father of AI) warned that AI could replace all forms of intellectual work.
Which I agree.
Color or black and white?
Deana Nastic : Black and white.
Natural light or artificial light?
Deana Nastic : Natural.
Which city seems the most photogenic to you?
Deana Nastic : Paris.
The city, country, or culture you dream of discovering?
Deana Nastic : Japan.
A place you never tire of?
Deana Nastic : Hotel Costes in Paris.
The image that, for you, represents the current state of the world?
Deana Nastic : Water Series by Edward Burtynsky.
In your opinion, what is missing in today’ world?
Deana Nastic : Human touch as well as social gathering.
If good existed, would you ask him to pose for you would opt for a selfie with?
Deana Nastic : Selfie.
Your favourite drug?
Deana Nastic : Never traded any drug.
Your best way to disconnect?
Deana Nastic : Dancing.
Your latest madness?
Deana Nastic : Needing Europe in my life I have bought a place in France, for my sanity.
Your greatest professional extravaganza?
Deana Nastic : Transitioning from painting to photography.
A profession you would not have liked to pursue?
Deana Nastic : Running a restaurant business.
Which question unsettles you the most?
Deana Nastic : Your favourite drug?
The last thing you did for the first time?
Deana Nastic : Travel in a small plain.
Your greatest regret?
Deana Nastic : Leaving Athens, Greece after two years.
If you had to start all over again?
Deana Nastic : I would be a sculptor.
If I could organize your ideal dinner, who would be at the table?
Deana Nastic : My husband.
What do you like people to say about you… after you are gone?
Deana Nastic : What people will think about me will be anyway, an opinion shaped by individual perception.
The one thing people absolutely must know about you?
Deana Nastic : She was a laughter.
A final word?
Deana Nastic : Searching.
