Shimmering fantasy and subtropical dystopia – the state of Florida in the southeast of the USA offers inexhaustible photographic and literary motifs in its uniqueness and ambivalence. The celebrated US-American author Lauren Groff, who lives in Florida, will read a short story she wrote for the book Floridas. In a joint Artist Talk Anastasia Samoylova and Lauren Groff talk about their collaboration on the book, which was published by Steidl in 2022, and about their fascination with the contradictions of the promising Sunshine State.

Anastasia Samoylova is an American artist who moves between observational photography and studio practice. Her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism, and the picturesque. Recent exhibitions include Fundación Mapfre; Eastman Museum; Chrysler Museum of Art; The Photographers’ Gallery; Kunst Haus Wien; HistoryMiami Museum; and Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle. In 2022 Samoylova was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Her work is in the collections at Pérez Art Museum, Miami; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Published monographs include Image Cities (Fundación Mapfre / Hatje Cantz, 2023), Floridas (Steidl, 2022), and FloodZone (Steidl, 2019).

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies and Matrix, and two short story collections, Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and elsewhere, and she was named one of Granta's 2017 Best Young American Novelists. Her work has been translated into thirty languages. She is currently the Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.