Hello, I’m Antonina!
I’m a mother, photographer, bookworm, geek and hippy-at-heart who loves to travel and has been known to throw caution to the wind. I use my camera and my curiosity to find love, joy, beauty and humour in unexpected places.
I’m a Russian-born Brit who has been living in the UK for almost 20 years, and working as a professional photographer since 2009. During that time I have won many awards and my work has been featured in a number of books and publications, including The British Journal of Photography, The Sunday Times and Portrait of Britain, and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, Heathrow Airport and Cambridge University in the UK, at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in the USA, and at Solar photograpy festival in Brazil, among other places.
My work is highly regarded within the photographic industry and I now split my time between photographing families in London (and beyond), working on long-term personal photographic projects, speaking at photography conferences and mentoring photographers from across the world.
I’m based in London and Surrey in the UK, but I have photographed families from all over the globe and travelled to the USA and Europe with my clients.
Random facts about me
Before I was a photographer, I was a lawyer. That was about a hundred years ago, but I’m still recovering.
Growing up, I had my nose firmly in books (of the science and adventure fiction kind) and dreamt of becoming a time traveller. Motherhood means that I read way less fiction now (but thank god for audiobooks) but I do get to time travel through my photography.
I home educate my 12 year old son. This is not pandemic-style school at home, but more of an organic, unstructured process of following his curiosity. I wrote about my decision to not send him to school for HuffPost back in 2016 and since then we’ve been on quite a journey, discovering the world and learning together (I honestly learn so much from him and the questions he asks).
I love smart stand up comedy. I think I’ve watched everything Hannah Gadsby and Trevor Noah have ever done. Multiple times.
I discovered that I’m autistic at the ripe age of 42 (and three quarters). Not that you’d be ever be able to tell by just looking at me – I’m what they call “high functioning” (a debatable term) and an expert at masking. In the words of my 12 year old son – who is also on the autism spectrum – “it is both a blessing and a curse”. I think of it as my superpower which comes with its own set of struggles, but in return enables me to think, see, and relate to people in a different – and often wonderful – way, and very much informs how I photograph.
My all-time favourite musician is P!nk. If you know, you know. But thanks to my 12 year old I’m also fluent in video game music (check out Naktigonis, seriously).
Although I live in London (and I love this city), I left part of my heart in the Scottish Highlands since my very first visit back in 2008, and I try to visit as much as I can.
Silence and the sound of waves are two of my favourite sounds in the whole world. I also love swimming and walking barefoot in the sand, and so during the summer months you’ll often find me jumping in the car and driving to the Sussex coast for a sunset swim.
