Burtseva’s methodology is defined by non-intervention. She does not direct, stage, or otherwise orchestrate the scenes she photographs; instead, she allows events to unfold autonomously. Her images frequently register moments of suspension: gestures arrested mid-action, encounters that resist narrative closure, and spatial configurations in which proximity and distance coexist in subtle tension.

Rather than functioning as documentary records, these photographs operate within a more nuanced field of perception. Burtseva is concerned with the fragile interval between visibility and opacity, between what is disclosed and what remains withheld. Recurring subjects, such as children at play, transient exchanges, solitary figures situated within expansive landscapes, are approached not as allegorical devices, but as contingent fragments of everyday experience.

“I don’t try to create situations — I wait for them. What interests me are the small, almost unnoticed moments when something quietly falls into place: a gesture, a glance, the way a body sits in a space. These photographs aren’t about big events or clear stories. They’re about staying with a moment that doesn’t fully explain itself, and letting it remain open.”
– Varvara Burtseva

Working with deliberation and sustained attentiveness, Burtseva positions photography as a practice of presence rather than explanation. Her images decline definitive interpretation, maintaining a productive ambiguity that invites prolonged viewing. In doing so, they foreground the instability of meaning and the quiet complexity embedded within ordinary life.

For any enquiries please contact Anya at gallery@simsreed.com.