Viktoria Enright

Viktoria Ciostek is a Buffalo, N.Y.-based photographer whose work explores the collisions of the natural and the manmade, in some cases by documenting abandoned cars and trucks in rural landscapes.

Using Western New York as a home base, Ciostek travels the world via back roads creating series of photographs in each region, including India, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic, among others. Her subjects are decidedly not the usual tourist attractions; rather, they stress the mundane and typically call attention to the environmental consequences of human presence. In her photos of North America, there are few if any people, but plenty of ghostly traces of them and their machines.

Ciostek was born in Poland; her father was involved in the Solidarity movement, and his political engagement was an early influence on her.