Planet K

During last year, I traveled several times to the most Western part of my home country – Kaliningrad region. This land has a strange and mystical history. Before the World War II it was a part of Germany. As a result of the War, it branched forth to the Soviet Union and was artificially populated by the Soviet citizens. People with a very hard destiny who came to reside in Kaliningrad region from all over the Soviet territory did not belong to this land. Right after the arrival they began to destroy the German legacy including architecture and historical artifacts. The roots of this aggression lay in the scars that war left in the hearts of people. At the same time immigrants had to adapt to new living conditions mentally and physically, to work and to raise children in Kaliningrad. The aim of my trips to Kaliningrad region was to find out how the new generation of local people - children and induces of the first immigrants are connected to the land which was alien to their parents and grandparents. Or even are they connected to it at all? I found the answer - it was a unique nature of these territories – sand, dunes, dancing forest and the Baltic sea. The nature is the part of the identity of people residing there despite their negation of the German legacy. They find mental peace in fusion with nature, listen to and ask advice of the sea, spend long time walking in the forest to think about future. I decided to photograph the people whom I accidentally met during my trip and the natural sacred places of each of them. As a result I formed diptychs which displayed the weakness, fragility and imperfection of human body and the power of mysterious nature of this region. Visual forms contradict with each other and live in harmony at the same time.