Anna Schteynshleyher's "AXE" from her "City of Destiny" series, named after the town Des Plaines, Illinios. The official motto of the town is "City of Destiny." (Photo: Anna Shteynshleyger)

Against a murky sky and dreary weather the iridescent glass building housing New York City’s International Center of Photography shines like a beacon. The white spacious walls gleam with strength and boldness, but the photographs on display are spectacular and unyielding as well. With a quick turn of a corner, spectators come face to face with a collection of portraits, landscapes, and interiors by Anna Shteynshleyger. Shteynshleyger’s work is notable for its formal beauty and technical execution. Her photographs are part of “Perspectives 2012,” an exhibition series that focuses on emerging young artists working in photography and video.  

Shteynshleyger’s series City of Destiny, traces a community of Orthodox Jewish immigrants. While connecting to her surroundings through photography, Shteynshleyger “intentionally withholds kinds of information about people and places she depicts that might enable the viewer to piece together a conventional unifying story.”

I found this interesting as I pondered the power of photographers’ ability to reveal and mask away anything with a quick shutter of the lens. One particular photograph that clearly emphasized Shteynshleyger’s goal to keep photographed subjects unknown is Covered, taken in 2008. Covered features a nude woman who is alone in front of a plain white wall. The identity of the woman in the photograph is unknown to all viewers. The woman’s body is positioned away from the camera to the point where viewers can only see a profile view and the woman’s hunched back. But even with just a profile view, viewers are still incapable of distinguishing the identity of this subject, since her hair has been brushed forward over her face. This covered any and all chances viewers had of identifying the woman and, as Shteynshleyger would suggest, of creating a story to supplement the meaning or purpose of the photograph. With the body position and the hair, this photograph simply and creatively sums up Shteynshleyger’s desire and purpose of keeping photographed subjects somewhat mysterious.  Shteynshleyger’s photographs promote a “tension between the pictures’ surface reticence and their hints of underlying drama,” and leave spectators fascinated and contemplative about the richly allusive photography.