Biography

Iuliia Nagibneva is a Rome-based visual artist working with analog photography and hand-marked interventions. Born in Novosibirsk, Russia, she holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano and has worked as a junior architect in Rome. Her architectural background continues to shape the way she observes the world — through space, scale, light, structure, and the quiet presence of the human body within built and natural environments. What began as a way to explore architecture through film photography has gradually evolved into a broader investigation of people, places, memory, and the fragile emotional connections that exist within everyday spaces. Through black-and-white analog photography, Iuliia focuses on unnoticed moments, silence, atmosphere, and inner presence. Her recent work introduces Braille-inspired tactile markings as a hand-applied intervention, transforming photographs into quiet maps of attention, inner light, and invisible emotional traces.

Artistic approach

My work explores quiet human presence within architectural, urban, and natural spaces. I am drawn to moments that often remain unnoticed: a pause, a gesture, a distance between people, the way a body inhabits light, silence, or a place. Coming from an architectural background, I approach photography through space, scale, composition, and atmosphere. Yet my focus is not only on the visible structure of a place, but on the emotional and spiritual presence that exists within it. I photograph people as traces of inner life — sometimes alone, sometimes near others, often suspended between connection and solitude. Through hand-marked interventions inspired by Braille, I introduce a tactile layer into the image. These raised dots become a language of the unseen: inner light, memory, attention, and the silent energy of the heart. They suggest that connection is not always visible as action; sometimes it exists as shared presence, distance, touch, or the possibility of being felt rather than simply seen. My practice is rooted in observation, but it moves toward transformation — turning each photograph into a quiet map of presence, where bodies, spaces, and invisible emotional traces begin to speak to one another.

Techniques and supports

Analog black-and-white photography, film photography, Fine Art prints on photographic paper, hand-applied Braille-inspired tactile interventions, relief acrylic medium, white and transparent ink, dot-based drawing, mixed media on paper