Mária Švarbová's figurine-like photographs are strangely hypnotic

There’s something incredibly surreal and sterile about Mária Švarbová’s photography but it’s this clinical landscape that makes her work so mesmerising. Based in Slovakia, Mária’s most recent projects, Alone, The Dining Room and The Doctor all have this unnerving stillness running through them with an almost filmic quality. It’s the group shots where blank faces perform simple functions such as eating or waiting that are most powerful because of the ambiguous relationships between the characters and the inescapably dark undertones lurking beneath vacant eyes.

Like a diorama, the lack of emotion turns Maria’s subjects into figurines being exhibited in stylised backdrops with us as the uncomfortable voyeur. The muted pastel tones and soft lighting heighten the unsettling, detached feeling and it’s Mária’s consistency throughout all of these projects that makes her unusual and striking style so successful.