About Oana Baković

Oana M. Baković is a contemporary fine art photographer with a predilection for the wild, sometimes endangered flora, peculiar plants, big bodies of water and motion.

She was born in the port city of Constanta, on the shores of the Black Sea, to a Croatian father and a Romanian mother. Always a passionate photographer, she started by documenting her family life tangential to her work as an advertising professional. 

In 2020, Oana finally focused more on her art, identifying that her interest lies mainly in the natural world and refining the technique of using a flash with ambient light and sometimes ND filters. The camera of her choice is a Fuji X100V.

Things started moving in the right direction when she participated and won first prize in a local photography art contest. The winning photograph of old Morris Minor was much praised in the local art community, which gave her confidence to go further.

By 2022, following her win at The Sony World Photography Awards, Aesthetica Magazine wrote, 

‘Baković offers a fresh take on floral photography. The results are almost alien, highlighting the natural world from the inside. Seemingly small plants become towering giants in front of Baković’s lens, rendered in rich and saturated colour palettes.’ 

Oana is committed to the cause of saving the natural world by showing its exquisite beauty in detail, capturing unique moments as they happen, and always looking for locations where nature thrives. 

Her photography of flowers and plants searches beyond their beauty and decorative value. Her flowers are not arranged outside of their own world’s rules. When she captures them, she lets her emotions and anxieties run wild and guide her.

By photographing them in their natural environment, she aims to convey their soul, highlighting the interplay of natural elements that make them unique and vulnerable.

Her fear of humanity losing its mindfulness of the surrounding nature drives her on this journey to capture and share the sometimes overlooked beauty of the world we are part of. 

The artist likes to emphasise ‘nature’s flaws’ in her art, and no shift, beautification or arrangement must add to what nature created herself.

The single artificial element is the flashlight, which I use to bring to life the fantastic microcosms of nature. She usually works during magic hours, chasing interesting angles, different natural light intensities, and wind-driven motions.

Her first collections ’Absolute Beginner’ (2021), ‘Desert Days’ (2022) and ‘Heroes In Bloom’ (2023) received prestigious awards from The Independent Photographer (2021), Fine Art Photography Awards (2022), Sony World Photography Awards (2022), The British Photography Awards (2022) and The International Photo Awards (2021, 2022, 2023). 

Selected works were published in major publications like CNN Style (2022), Amateur Photographer (2022), Forbes (2022), Aesthetica Magazine (2022, 2023), Artdoc Photography Magazine (2022, 2023) and Lensculture (2022, 2023).

The artist has exhibited worldwide, locally, online, and in group shows at prestigious galleries like Willy-Brandt-Haus - Berlin, MOPA - San Diego, Open Eye Gallery - Liverpool, Busan International Photo Festival - Seoul, Fondazione Stelline - Milan, Fotofestival Lenzburg (2022), Sony Imaging Gallery - Tokyo to name a few, and also, more recently, in Hyderabad with The Indian Photo Festival or locally in East Sussex at The Sussex Contemporary - Brighton and in London at The Other Art Fair.