It’s Darkest Before The Dawn

On 24 February 2022, my country, Russia, started a full-scale war in Ukraine, while concurrently intensifying repression against its citizens. Because of my public anti-war stance, I was 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 family relocated to Portugal. Worries about war, death, emigration, loss of home, the dimness of the future, feelings of helplessness and guilt, the need to integrate into a new environment, and fear for my children, the desire to protect them in their fragility – 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.