PROJECT CLOSE

Year: 2020–2022
Medium: Digital photography / Architectural collage
Awards:
– Fine Art Photography Awards – 1st Place (Architecture)
– reFocus Awards – 1st Place (Architecture)
– Chromatic Awards – 2nd Place (Architecture)
– PX3 2024 – Silver (Book/Other)

Exhibitions:
– Beijing Hanjian Fine Art Gallery (2021–2022)
– Lishui Photo Festival (2021)
– Yixian Photo Festival (2021)
– Paradajs Photo Festival, Banská Štiavnica (2025)

Book:
60 photographs, 5 chapters, graphic haikus by Katarína Karafová, design by Matúš Stenko

CLOSE is a visual reflection on the pandemic and its psychological effects.
The global lockdown forced people to stay at home—together, enclosed, often in limited space. Daily life shifted inward. Homes became zones of both safety and emotional tension.

We were suddenly closer than ever—physically, but not always emotionally.

In this series, I turned my attention to urban housing estates—architectural structures designed for shared living that, during the pandemic, took on a different meaning. I digitally multiply, mirror, and distort fragments of these buildings to evoke the repetitiveness of lockdown days, the claustrophobic rhythm of isolation, and the strange tension between connection and disconnection.

The images balance between documentary and abstraction, aiming not to depict reality, but to reinterpret its psychological weight.

Unlike my earlier portrait-based work, Close explores space itself—how architecture can reflect internal states. It reflects on what it means to be “close”: physically shut in, emotionally distant, or unexpectedly connected in times of crisis.