Who watches whom when the trees stare back? We sit down with visual artist Elena Kristofor to trace how a childhood between sea and steppe collides with the dense, watchful woods of Austria, and how that tension fuels a practice that blends analogue photography, sculpture, and site-responsive installation. Elena shares the visceral experience of moving through the forest at walking speed, camera at her belly, layering multiple exposures onto a single negative to compress an entire path into one image—then carrying that print back among the trees to let balance and breath draw a second line across the surface.

From there, the conversation opens onto the Mongolian Gobi, where the horizon runs unbroken and the body relaxes into radical openness. In that empty sweep, Elena works with mirrors, slicing space into reflective shards that challenge the camera’s central gaze. Think cubism for landscapes: thin spatial slices rearranged so you see more than one side at once. We talk about why disrupting single-point perspective matters, how Western habits of looking are not neutral, and what happens when sculpture and photograph meet in high wind and bright light.

Back in the studio and gallery, branches become actors, not props. Self-portraits face a precarious pile ready to fall. Tree portraits stare back like witnesses. Hybrid figures—half human, half tree—emerge from a chance moment in the steppe, evoking something mythic and tender. We follow Elena into fog-thick exhibitions that erase sightlines so visitors must feel their way, engaging balance and breath as part of seeing. Threaded through it all is a candid admission: the inner conflict between early inscriptions of endless steppe and later marks of forested Austria, a split that refuses to resolve and instead powers the work’s urgency.

If you’re curious about analogue processes, environmental art, landscape interventions, or how place writes itself into the body, this conversation offers clear methods and resonant ideas you can carry on your next walk. Listen, share with a friend who loves landscape, and leave a review to tell us which world shapes you more—steppe or forest.