Nadya Lev (born in Moscow, Russia) is a Russian-American photographer, editor, publisher, designer, and entrepreneur.

Early life

Nadya Lev spent her childhood in the USSR, growing up in a

Soviet dissident Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term ''dissident'' was used in the Soviet Union in the period from the mid-1960s until ...

family.

Career

Photography

Lev began her photography career at age 21, shooting the 50th anniversary cover for

fetish fashion Fetish fashion is any style or appearance in the form of a type of clothing or accessory, created to be extreme or provocative in a fetishistic manner. These styles are by definition not worn by the majority of people; if everyone wears an it ...

magazine

Skin Two ''Skin Two'' is a fetish magazine covering aspects of the worldwide fetish subculture. The name is a reference to fetish clothing as a "second skin". History and profile ''Skin Two'' was founded in 1983 by the publisher Tim Woodward and the photo ...

. Subsequently, her work was used by

Vogue Italia ''Vogue Italia'' is the Italian edition of ''Vogue'' magazine. Owned by Condé Nast International, it has been called the top fashion magazine in the world. It's been in publication since 1964. Name ''Vogue Italia'' was first published as ''N ...

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

, Dazed & Confused,

Elle ''Elle'' (stylized ''ELLE'') is a worldwide women's magazine of French origin that offers a mix of fashion and beauty content, together with culture, society and lifestyle. The title means "she" or "her" in French. ''Elle'' is considered the w ...

Marie Claire ''Marie Claire'' is a French international monthly magazine first published in France in 1937, followed by the United Kingdom in 1941. Since then various editions are published in many countries and languages. The feature editions focus on wo ...

New York Magazine ''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'', ...

Harper's Bazaar ''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the st ...

The Museum at FIT The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) is a public college in New York City. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) and focuses on art, business, design, mass communication, and technology connected to the fashion industry. I ...

and Nick Knight's SHOWStudio in features on

alternative fashion Alternative fashion or Alt fashion is fashion that stands apart from mainstream commercial fashion. Alternative fashion includes the fashions of specific subcultures such as emo, scene, goth subculture, hip hop, cyberpunk, kawaii, cottagecore, ...

. Lev's work has been described as sitting at the crossroads of portraiture and fashion, with her subjects possessing an "almost surreal combination of hollow power" and her work emphasizing "the model as storyteller rather than empty object." Seeking to understand photography from her models' perspective, Lev began posing as a subject for photographer colleagues. She has modeled for

Clayton Cubitt Clayton James Cubitt (born March 2, 1972), also known as Siege, is an American photographer, filmmaker and writer living in Brooklyn. He is known for applying an "arrestingly controlled and sleek sense of style" to art, portrait, erotic and fashion ...

Allan Amato Allan Amato; (born July 18, 1974) is an American portrait photographer and film director. Career In 2005, Amato was working in advertising in New Orleans, but changed his career path after Hurricane Katrina forced him to relocate. Amato was ...

and

Christopher Voelker Christopher Voelker (born February 2, 1961 in Los Angeles, California - Died September 11, 2014) was an American photographer. General information Voelker was a full-time wheelchair user due to a spinal cord injury ( quadriplegia) from a high-s ...

. In 2011, Lev became the second-youngest person in medical literature to be diagnosed with genetically-inherited PEX glaucoma. She lost a significant portion of her vision and underwent 15 eye surgeries. After adjusting to hallucination-like distortions in vision, Lev re-trained herself in photography and resumed publishing new work. In 2013, Lev was appointed as general manager and later CEO of Zivity, an art patronage platform for models and photographers founded by

Cyan Banister Cyan Banister (born 1977) is an American angel investor and entrepreneur. She is a partner at Long Journey Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund. She was an early investor in Uber, Niantic, Postmates, DeepMind, Carta, Thumbtack, Flexport ...

Print publishing

Lev is one of the co-founders of Coilhouse Magazine – a print and web art publication established in 2007, together with

Meredith Yayanos Meredith Anne Yayanos is a California-based violinist, vocalist and thereminist. Her work has been featured on tracks with artists including The Dresden Dolls, The Vanity Set, Revue Noir, David Garland and The Walkmen. Since 2021, Yayanos is a me ...

and Zoetica Ebb. The magazine's tagline was "a love letter to alternative culture, in an era where alternative culture no longer exists." Coilhouse was widely acclaimed for thoughtful coverage of art, music, fashion, film, technology and literature. Coilhouse has also been praised for its high production value and original graphic design by creative director Courtney Riot. Lev's design for the original Coilhouse website, inspired by Merz Magazine and

El Lissitzky Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, ; – 30 December 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Эль Лиси́цкий; yi, על ליסיצקי), was a Russian artist ...

, won

L.A. Weekly ''LA Weekly'' is a free weekly alternative newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin, who served as president and editor until 1991. Voice Media Group sold the paper in late 2017 to Semanal Media LLC, whose paren ...

's Best-Designed Site Aesthetic Award. In 2017, Lev announced that she was working on a Japanese coffee-table art book titled ''Eros & Thanatos'', together with Tokyo-based art magazine editor Masanao Amano.

Mixed reality

In 2016, Lev co-founded the technology company Aconite together with Star St. Germain. Lev describes Aconite as "a

mixed reality Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time. Mixed reality is largely synony ...

storytelling platform." Lev and St.Germain define mixed reality stories as immersive experiences that sit at the intersection of adventure, narrative and gaming. The project draws on several gameplay, real-world exploration and storytelling traditions, including

transmedia Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. From a producti ...

psychogeography Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolutiona ...

escape room An escape room, also known as an escape game, puzzle room, exit game, or riddle room is a game in which a team of players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal in a limite ...

s, and live-action roleplay. Aconite's first prototype was ''Limberlost'', a

location-based game A location-based game (or location-enabled game, or geolocation-based game) is a type of game in which the gameplay evolves and progresses via a player's location. Location-based games must provide some mechanism to allow the player to report thei ...

with a magical realist narrative written by Steen Comer, designed to be played at any bookstore or library in the world. The first playtest took place at

Powell's Books Powell's Books is a chain of bookstores in Portland, Oregon, and its surrounding metropolitan area. Powell's headquarters, dubbed Powell's City of Books, claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. Powell's City of ...

during XOXO Fest 2016 in Portland. Players used their mobile phones to solve puzzles which led them through a sequence of physical books. Each book contained an illustration that acted as an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

marker. When triggered, the markers displayed audiovisual data that provided clues for the next book in the sequence, and unlocked new parts of the game's narrative. In 2019, Aconite came out of stealth mode and announced their first title, HoloVista.

References

External links

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Coilhouse MagazineAconite
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lev, Nadya Living people Russian emigrants to the United States American women chief executives American corporate directors American women company founders American company founders American women photographers American magazine editors Photographers from Moscow Fetish photographers American fashion photographers 1982 births American women magazine editors 1980s births Temple University alumni Russian businesspeople in the United States 21st-century American women