Thread from the world

Thread from the world is a project dedicated to people in the global lockdown. In the times, when communication around the world has shifted to video conferencing, in the small windows of the Zoom interface one can see not only your vis-a-vis, but also the environment around them: a gap between the tiles, a thread caught on a curtain, a shower hidden away but still visible in the frame. Where does the intimate ends and the public begins? Persons become inseparable from their environment. In this situation, the frame of the screen sets a point and direction of view. I tried to capture sameness and difference of the conditions everyone was in during the first lockdown. A Russian proverb says: ‘A thread from the world makes a shirt for a naked one’ (literally meaning ‘many a little makes a mickle’). The image of a thread uniting the faraway corners of the world became the basis of this project. It was conceived spontaneously during the first remote shooting at my home city and began with the thought that, apparently, people are facing the same problem, which leads to the idea of uniting people during the fight with the global pandemic. There was no selection of heroes for the shooting — all those who responded and were interested, participated. As a result, 72 photoshoots were done under completely different technical conditions. The full project can be studied at its official website; https://threadfromthe.world