Another spring

Perhaps, never before have we so selflessly admitted our love to our suburban areas. We are overwhelmed by maternal tenderness for seedlings on the windowsill, an empty greenhouse, the first sprouts of green onions and dry weeds.

We give new life to plants, which gives rise to a sense of peace and accomplishment of duty to the world and ourselves. Young trees, bushes, flower bulbs ... We dig them into the ground and sincerely smile at the sun.

Once immobilized within the city, perhaps we began a journey inside ourselves?

The foundation of my world is my family.

To be in harmony with ourselves is something that we should not lose, either now or after a pandemic. Under medical masks, we should preserve good faces, under latex gloves - warm hands, under gloomy thoughts - faith in tomorrow.

I dedicate this series to my 94-year-old grandmother Anna.

The protagonist of the project is not self-isolation as such. My hero is my family. It just so happened that an invisible protective tape divided us into 3 parts. The first one is my parents and grandmother 95 years old. They spend all their time in a country house, occasionally leaving for the nearest regional supermarket. The second part is my husband's parents, retirees, both at risk of age 65+. They literally sit in a country house 140 km away. from Moscow. They leave the site only in the late evening to take out the trash, calling it a walk. And the third is my husband, who has to spend most of his time in a city apartment at a remote job. He promised to come to us on vacation, we are waiting.

Work on the project began in the second half of March, when I took the first shots of my grandmother. I saw her reverent attitude to the seedlings on the windowsill, heard her talking to her, stroking the leaves. “Here it is, a symbol of hope that we all need so much today,” I thought, “and since then I've been filming every day.

Soon I was so fired up by the project that I began to approach the production of shots more inventively, inviting family members to take not always comfortable images and poses. But to my great surprise, they all meekly obeyed my creator's will, and then relished the result with pleasure. Their support and sense of humor gave me strength and moved the project forward.

The whole project was filmed with an iPhone camera. I made this decision deliberately, as often the photographs were born spontaneously: I saw and immediately took off.

An important part of this project was the theme of stopped time. Frozen figures, detached faces are the result of a sense of the hopelessness of the situation. When can we live as before? The pandemic robbed my parents of income overnight. In order not to get discouraged, they do garden work, play music, and in the evenings watch funny videos sent by friends. Father-in-law is also in the garden, and during breaks in gadgets: they read the news and communicate with loved ones who are actually far away. As my mother remarked: “If at the beginning of self-isolation I confused the days of the week, today I can hardly remember what year it is. Time seemed to have ceased to make sense for me. "