About Miami Street Photographer

Russian born artist Emir Shabashvili is based in the United States. His hometown is Miami, Florida.  He is self-taught photographer with primary interest in Street and Cityscape  genres. 

"...Born in 1957 in Soviet Russia, I have started taking pictures in 60s, influenced by my father's interest in photography and filming. I have been using the media as an amateur for the most of my life and came to a serious photography in late 90s. But it had not become my  passion until after moving from Russia to the USA I started the Walking Downtown project related to the urban environments and to the interaction of humankind with the Machine it build. This project had resulted in 2 books I have published in 2008, "La Machine a Habiter" (100 images) and "Selected photographs" (36 photographs).

 I am still working today along the same lines. The primary subject is an American downtown as a place where nothing is considered to be permanent and indispensable, where people seem to be small and unimportant part of the structure, almost parasites in the huge body made of white metal, dark glass and artificial stone. The only way they can survive in this strange machine is by carrying a home, imaginable but the only one – inside they heads. They carry their homes like hermit-crab carries its shell. I know this because I am one of them and still carry the same one‑story wooden house with extra attic room once been mine..."