Natasha

This project is an attempt to recreate an alternative reality: what could have been but did not happen by the will of circumstances. Using the photographic image as the basis for the implementation of the project, I bring the invisible and fictional to a special level of persuasiveness and reliability. Photography is a form reality representation. After all, even knowing that we are faced with a photomontage, we believe a little in what we see.

This allowed me, as an author, to live through my own photographs an alternative history of my family. A story that would have been possible if my sister had been born 37 years ago.

The reason to return to the past was an unexpected discovery. Many years ago, after my birth, my mother had an abortion. It turned out by chance.

Now the issue of reproductive rights is splitting society. Someone is an ardent defender of women's rights to abortion, and someone quite the opposite is trying to prohibit this action at the legislative level. I am among those who look at the situation through the eyes of an ordinary woman for whom it was rather difficult to become a mother.

I also wanted to end the “skeleton in the closet” and make this situation visible to myself and my family. Transfer it from the field of embarrassing silence to the area of open conversation. I wanted to understand my mother: what led her then? Financial uncertainty about the future?

Lack of support from loved ones? Emotions?

For a while, my house turned into a film set, where I played the role of both a photographer and two models. Why a sister because it could have been a brother?

Strange, but the image of a twin sister haunted me since childhood. This was the theme of games, fantasies, which sometimes turned into reality, when acquaintances and strangers accidentally called me by a different name - Natasha.

At times it was difficult to reincarnate, but it helped that my imaginary sister would be my age. I imagined how she could look, talk, move, what we could do together.

At times it seemed that I really heard her voice and felt a presence.

What if she was born and not me?

Project "Natasha" is available in photobook format.