Painting and Collage on Found Photography — A Mixed-Media Artbook by Julia Soboleva
In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See is a 200-page hardcover publication presenting the mixed-media practice of Julia Soboleva, issued by The Mansion Press. Printed on Munken 150 gsm paper and measuring 19 × 22 cm, this volume forms part of the Artbooks & Artist Publications catalogue at Lokator100.
About the Work
The book is structured as a sequence of visual narratives rather than a single continuous argument. Soboleva applies painting and collage directly to found photographic imagery, producing scenes that hold their meaning in suspension — neither fully explained nor arbitrarily obscure.
The material returns persistently to a set of tensions: madness and reality, family and taboo, inherited memory and private mythology. These are not illustrated themes but pressures that shape how the images are made and sequenced. The title borrows a line from Theodore Roethke's poem "In a Dark Time," though the book does not annotate the reference — it absorbs it.
The publication is documented across multiple interior spreads, giving a precise account of how the work reads in sequence and at scale.
The Artist
Julia Soboleva is a Latvia-born, UK-based mixed-media artist. Her process combines painting and collage with found photographic imagery, producing scenes that behave like fragments of narrative rather than illustrations of a fixed text. Her work returns consistently to themes of madness and reality, family structures, taboo, and transgenerational memory. She completed an MA in Illustration at Manchester School of Art in 2018 and works as an educator and freelance designer.
A companion volume, The Fire That Drank The Shadow, is also available at Lokator100. This copy is dispatched from Germany with tracked shipping and careful packaging.
