THE WAY OF A WOMAN
Seeing female empowerment as one of the key topics in my work and art, I have been photographing the girls and women I met – those from different backgrounds and walks of life, of different ages and occupations, with diverse interests, dreams, and goals. This is a series of portraits that illustrate how little girls with wide-open eyes and hearts turn into wise and self-confident women, willing to change the world around them.
sunset at the gulf of finland
Portrait of a girl playing at a city beach in the south of Saint Petersburg
THE SPECTATOR
Portrait of a girl watching street musicians perform in the Moscow underground
DANCERS
Portraits of Ksenia and Anna, art school students from Vytegra, a small town in the Russian north
STASYA (NOT HOLDING OUR PEACE, work in progress)
Portraits of Stasya from Minsk.

The photos and the video are a part of the project called Not Holding Our Peace, in the course of which I currently photograph young poets from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. I take their pictures via Zoom and ask them to share a poem that they have written after February 24 which reflects their feelings best.

Then, I place their portraits into the natural environment, surrounding them by plants and flowers as these are the symbol of life and an allegory of poetry.
beheaded future.
tomorrow, we'll go out into the streets
as naked, same-sex babies,
pressed and with hollow thoughts.
despite a plethora of abscesses,
those bold dots will align.
they will align and encircle us like a wall,
they will take us to the slaughter as if we were a herd.
and will there be enlightenment?
no, there will be confusion, fear, drowning in one's own pity.
to hold on a bit longer – that's the only thing we can do.
the indispensable pain of repentance.
a chance of being cursed by a random hound shames us.
we are afraid of their opinion.
where is your 5G generation?
where are the naked, the pure, the faithful?
those who are not servants, not some junta.
where are the unsubmissive? where are the pure ones?
those who were deliberately born to endure?
look: these are the seedlings,
a sign of your fear and cowardice.
they're not covered with flowers in the field,
they're in a concrete field of absurdity,
chained, pressed, with hollow thoughts.
will they sprout? what do you think, civilians?
you yourselves are those dots.

nora
Portraits of Lynora Caniford, a cosmetology student at Morgantown Beauty College
SUN-KISSED
Portraits of Lynora Caniford, a cosmetology student at Morgantown Beauty College
police officer
Photo story about Elena, a police officer from the Russian north
MOM
Work in progress. A photo story about Irina Sokolova, my mother and an artist who makes paper-mache dolls
JULIA
Portraits of Julia Bogachikhina, a WWII veteran.
FIRST LADY
Portraits of Mildred Fizer, the first female director of a state 4-H program.
Made on
Tilda