Swimming Pools

Photographer Mária Švarbová has an enduring fascination with the functionalist architecture of Soviet-era buildings, largely inspired by a 2014 visit to a closed swimming pool in Švarbová’s native Slovakia. Discovering themes of female empowerment and a more intimate view of the relationship between models, we see her subjects frozen in the composition, the swimmers as smooth and cold as the pool tiles, with colors softly vibrating in a dream-like atmosphere.

Mária Švarbová explores different strands of thematic content stemming from her fascination with Soviet-era architecture and swimming pools. However, despite the retro setting, the pictures somehow evoke a futuristic feeling as well, as if they were taken somewhere completely alien. Her work reconceptualizes the functionalist architecture of this period as a futuristic and highly stylized space with visual purity and cool detachment. An intimate and symmetrical view of the relationship between models and the space around them is informed by her artistic expression of movements in feminism and the BLM movement.