Sylvia de Swaan

I’m a Romanian born art and documentary photographer who works on several long-term projects concurrently, often informed or influenced by world events. Thus my longest running work, "Return," currently titled, "Narratives: The Landscape of Memory" was impelled by the fall of communism that made it possible to travel East of the Berlin Wall to witness history in the making and explore the almost forgotten terrain of my early childhood, a voyage of discovery into a dark and sometimes frightening terrain. Likewise it was the shock of 9/11 that led me to explore our rapidly changing panorama in a series titled “Sub-version."

My work has has been awarded grants, prizes and fellowships and residencies from the Washington Project for the Arts, Art Matters, Inc, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Aaron Siskind Foundation, ArtsLink, Light Work, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art; Austrian Ministry of Culture, Anderson Ranch Art Center and the Society for Photographic Education. In 2016 I was granted a fourth NYFA fellowship for my continuing personal work.