SO FAR SO CLOSE. IN SEARCH OF BERING ISLAND | 2023
My project is an attempt to find an answer to the question of whether you can consider the territory you don’t remember as your homeland. It is based on archival black-and-white photographs taken by my father between 1967 and 1970, when he served as chief of the border outpost on Bering Island. 18 rolled-up films stored on a far shelf in his closet.
The past is said to be something that can be mentally seen but cannot be touched. But what if you tried? One day I picked up a Soviet camera just like the one my father used to shoot with, loaded it with color film, and set out to find my island around me, hoping to recapture a personal memory of the time of my birth. After all, I was only one year old when our family left Bering Island. By inscribing the past into the present, I sought to merge two different times and two different spaces, and thus regain a sense of homeland.
The project was initially realized in 2023 in the form of a photobook, published by myself in a limited edition. In 2024, the Museum of the History of Photography in St. Petersburg hosted my solo exhibition dedicated to this project.
