It’s Darkest Before The Dawn

On 24 February 2022, my country, Russia, started a full-scale war in its neighboring country, Ukraine, while concurrently intensifying repression against its own citizens. Because of my public anti-war stance, I began to receive threats and was eventually denounced. Fearing the increasing possibility of imprisonment and the harrowing chance that my young children would be left without a mother, I decided to leave Russia. In the autumn of 2022, my husband and I, together with our young children aged 3 and 5, decided to relocate to Portugal in response to the escalating situation in Russia. 

To cope with the complex feelings and strong emotions tearing me from the inside, I picked up my camera again after a very long break. Everywhere around me, I began to see images reflecting my emotional state. Worries about war, death, emigration, loss of home, the dimness of the future, feelings of helplessness and guilt, questions about my own identity, and the need to integrate into a new environment – all these began to turn into images. Photography became my therapy, an opportunity to express and release the deep emotional pain I was grappling with. Over time, it became clear that the leitmotif of my project is the same as the reason for leaving the country where I grew up and lived for 36 years of my life – fear for my children, the desire to protect them in their fragility, and innocence, to hide them from the horror of the world that has gone mad. 

By combining black and white and color images, photography, and text, by creating sequences of photographs over time and inviting the viewer to delve into the details of the images in search of hidden meaning, I try to create a narrative in which my personal story and the issues that concern me could be a starting point for others to think about and become an occasion for open discussions on challenging and uncomfortable topics, inviting viewers to reflect and participate in conversation. 

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