Zero F*cks Given

Astronomer Annie Jump Cannon said, “The stars are like windows into the past, allowing us to see how the universe has evolved over billions of years.” Through her project Zero F*cks Given, Anna Dobrovolskaya-Mints explores the lengths one can travel merely by looking up. By raising our focus to the heavens, Dobrovolskaya-Mints asks that her audience open their eyes to the beauty of the universe and re-examine our relationship with the world around us. Her photographs offer us a way to heal, a moment of calm and an escape from a global chaos, which is manifested though the noise of mass digital information. Dobrovolskaya-Mints photograph’s shifts our focus away from the violence that we inflict on each other and up into the cosmos. Her work reminds us that we are all made of stardust, joined in a universal family, whilst we gaze at the universe that bore us. Dobrovolskaya-Mint’s work with digital photography loosens the bonds between the medium, the image, and its fragments and by doing so she clarifies a purpose in the face of uncertainty and confusion. She engages with these specific characteristics of digital photography according to her inner artistic vision of creating photographs that stare up into the soul of the universe and connecting with the objective reality of the cosmos, free from the subjective noise of human affairs. Humankind may be celebrated by their differences, but we all look at the same stars. Text by Cheryl Newman