CARINA GLUKOVSKY — The quite trace of light.

Interview by Dyumna.

Introduction 

Carina Glukovsky’s photographs do not announce themselves; they arrive. Softly. Slowly. As if carried by a current of air rather than taken by a camera. Working almost entirely with natural light and natural environments, she creates images that dissolve into their surroundings—bodies folding into moss, skin merging with the hush of mist, sunlight settling like a second breath.

Born in Moscow, Glukovsky’s first artistic training was in acting at VGIK, but she left performance behind early. What she found in photography was not escape but alignment - a medium spacious enough to hold stillness, intuition, and truth without spectacle. Today, living and working out of her studio in Austria, she is known for her ethereal approach to portraiture, unclothed self-studies, and her devotion to the tender, hesitant light of early mornings or late afternoons.

In this conversation over many emails, she speaks with remarkable clarity and softness about her process, her resistance to censorship, and her pursuit of subtle light. We thank her for her time and earnestness in answering our curiosities. Check out her ethereal work on @sunaryna!

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Dyumna: Your images feel understated in a way that’s unusual in contemporary photography. What draws you to these “quiet revelations”?

Carina: I think the world is already too loud. Most images today try to win you over in the first half-second, like advertising—loud colors, sharp contrasts, urgent narratives. I’m not interested in that competition.

What moves me are the small, nearly invisible transitions: a breath softening, a shoulder relaxing, light passing across skin like a thought. Those are the revelations that unfold rather than demand.

Quietness creates room for the viewer’s own interior world to surface, which is far more meaningful than anything I could impose. My photographs are invitations, not declarations.

Dyumna: Softness is a defining element of your work. What does it mean to you aesthetically?

Carina: Softness isn’t fragility. It’s permeability—the willingness to let the world pass through you without armoring against it. In a way, softness is a form of truth-telling. A soft image doesn’t insist on its power; it reveals it slowly.

Aesthetically, softness gives people space to approach an image on their own terms. It decentralizes the photographer’s authority and replaces it with a kind of mutual breathing. The viewer isn’t pushed; they’re welcomed.

Softness also mirrors how memory operates. Our recollections are rarely sharp. They drift, blur, glow around the edges. Softness allows an image to live closer to the way the mind holds experience.

Dyumna: Natural light in your photographs always appears soft, subtle, almost transcendental. How do you approach sunlight?

Carina: I treat sunlight as a collaborator, not a tool. I never force it. I wait for the sun to grow shy—when it becomes diffused, almost self-effacing.

There’s a moment, usually in late afternoon or on overcast days, when the light takes on a trembling quality. It hovers rather than illuminates. It settles on skin like a quiet presence rather than a spotlight. That’s the light I trust.

I could use artificial sources, but they carry intention. Natural light carries uncertainty. It arrives in different moods, and I try to meet it with respect rather than control. If the light isn’t ready, I don’t shoot. Patience becomes a form of devotion.

Dyumna: Much of your work is made in forests, fields, and near water. Why these places?

Carina: Nature is the most honest space I know. The forest doesn’t care if you’re beautiful or flawed; it offers a kind of nonjudgmental companionship. Shooting outside teaches humility - you’re not the center of anything. You’re just another organism interacting with light and air.

I also love the way nature quiets the body. When someone stands near water or under trees, their breath changes. Their posture softens. The world becomes spacious again. That shift - the return to a more animal, unguarded state is what I photograph.

And then, of course, there is the practical fact that sunlight behaves differently outdoors. It wraps rather than strikes. It drifts rather than directs. That makes the images feel dreamlike without entering fantasy.

Dyumna: Your subjects often appear deeply unguarded. How do you create that sense of trust?

Carina: By removing performance. Most people assume they need to give something to the camera—beauty, emotion, pose, narrative. I tell them they don’t need to give anything at all.

Sometimes we sit in silence for twenty minutes before I even take one frame. Silence is crucial. When silence enters, the body’s defenses drop. People stop arranging themselves. Their natural presence comes forward—not the curated one, but the one that lives behind it.

My job is not to pull anything out of them. My job is simply to witness what’s already there.

Dyumna: Slowness seems integral to your process.

Carina: Slowness is the essence. It protects sensitivity. When I move slowly, I notice the micro-shifts—the way sunlight tilts, the way a breeze barely touches the grass, the way tension melts from a jaw.

Speed is an enemy of perception. Slowness lets the world reveal itself truthfully, without distortion.

Dyumna: Your early training at VGIK emphasized performance and discipline. How did that shape you?

Carina: It shaped me mostly by contrast. VGIK was demanding, hierarchical, and deeply rooted in structured discipline. I felt constantly pushed into emotional performances that didn’t belong to me. Sumit and I bonded over that shared discomfort - we both disliked institutional learning that prioritized obedience over curiosity. We were like a small tribe. Some 4-5 artists and Sumit was working at a studio which became our refuge from VGIK. We were able to use cameras, lights and stages over there without any restrictions. It was both an escape and a learning process.

Those days taught me that I needed a different kind of artistic space. Photography became the place where I could breathe, where presence mattered more than technique, and where I didn’t have to “act” to be seen. Leaving that environment wasn’t a rejection - it was a realignment.

Dyumna: How do you navigate the idea of censorship today?

Carina: Censorship isn’t always a government or a policy. Often it’s the quiet internal voice that says: Don’t show too much. Don’t be too soft. Don’t be too honest. Don’t be too feminine. Don’t be too still.

That’s where censorship becomes truly dangerous—when the artist begins enforcing it on themselves. My resistance is subtle. I refuse spectacle, refuse provocation-for-the-sake-of-it, refuse the demand that art must shout to matter. By staying gentle, I protect a kind of freedom that loudness can’t reach. Softness can be a very effective rebellion.

Dyumna: And practically speaking - how are you using the internet to bypass censorship?

Carina: We build our own small ecosystems. Artists like me, Sumit, Tia, Oleg, Dmitry and many more. Not big platforms. Not the usual channels. We use encrypted circles, micro- websites, private newsletters, closed communities, cloud vaults shared between a handful of people. We rely on peer-to-peer distribution and sometimes even anonymous uploads. The internet is vast, and not all of it is gated by algorithms.

Dyumna: How do you plan to reach out to a larger audience?

Carina: It’s the opposite of virality. It’s slow, human, almost artisanal in the way work circulates. But that’s precisely why it works. When you avoid the mainstream routes, no algorithm or institution can moderate you. We would love to be published in big magazines, art galleries or post on instagram without worrying about our accounts getting banned - but not at the cost of our art & skill. 

We are trusting the process like the artists that came before us. We’re simply making ourselves ungovernable. In our journeys we meet senior artists and like minded people who recognise that eventually. What I love is the sense of togetherness this creates - people who come to our work do so intentionally, not through scrolling. It feels like sharing art in a quiet room rather than shouting into a noisy mall. It’s also a subtle form of rebellion—distributing beauty where gatekeepers cannot interfere.  And most of us have been doing this for almost ten years or more now. Fortunately, we have each found our niche and spaces to express ourselves. It’s been slow but authentic. 

Dyumna: Your unclothed self-portraits are strikingly unguarded, yet never feel exposed. Why?

Carina: Because nudity is not inherently revealing. Clothing carries story—status, taste, gender, aspiration. When I remove it, I remove all those narratives. What remains is neutral, elemental.

In my self-portraits, the body becomes a landscape. It’s not about seduction or confession. It’s about returning to a state before story, before social meaning. That neutrality is what makes it feel unexposed. The body is simply present, not performing.

Dyumna: Because many viewers are sensitive to nudity, do you ever feel the need to justify your choice to work with the naked body?

Carina: I don’t feel fear or unease around the subject, because my work stems from gentleness, not provocation. I never approach nudity as something charged—it feels as natural as breathing to me. I don’t make arguments for it; the images themselves carry the intention. If someone sees them with openness, they understand the softness in them. If not, that’s okay.

Dyumna: Your photographs often feel suspended between memory and the present. Is that intentional?

Carina: Yes. I’m drawn to threshold moments: right before something changes, right before a thought forms, right after a breath leaves. These are moments that feel half-remembered even as they happen.

Photography freezes time, but I want the freeze to feel porous—as if you could step into it and the moment would continue unfolding.

Dyumna: When do you know a photograph is finished?

Carina: When it rests inside me. Some images keep vibrating—they ask for more attention, more listening. Others settle immediately, like a soft weight in the chest. Those are the ones I keep. It’s less about perfection and more about equilibrium.

DS: Contemporary photography moves quickly. Do you feel pressured by trends?

Carina: Not at all. Trends have their own urgency, their own hunger for novelty. My work moves at a different rhythm—slow, observant, patient. If a trend intersects with what I’m doing, that’s coincidence, not intention.

I trust the pace of moss more than the pace of fashion.

Dyumna: What is the joy of creation for you? Of photography?

Carina: The joy of creation, for me, is deeply childlike—playful, curious, unguarded. When I’m photographing, I feel the same freedom I felt as a child making mud sculptures by a river or drawing imaginary creatures on scraps of cardboard. There’s a purity to experimentation: the delight of “What if I try this?” without demanding results.

That childlike sense of discovery is essential. I can’t work like this in the mainstream. It keeps the work alive. The world becomes textured again: stones are not stones but invitations; sunlight is not illumination but a companion; the body is not an object but a playground of sensation.

Creation is never about mastery—it’s about wonder.

Dyumna: What are you seeking next?

Carina: Light that almost disappears. Human presence before it forms into expression. Water that holds its own reflections like secrets. I want to explore that thin space where the world becomes almost translucent—where truth is not stated but simply allowed to exist.

Photography, at its best, is not extraction. It’s permission.

END