SLEEPING GARDEN

This is a project about the transformation of our souls in times of crisis when life stops like a sleeping garden. To awaken, we have to make the way through difficulties, to re-analyze values, to realize why we are unhappy, to accept ourselves, to face our fears and to overcome them afterward.

For several years I was depressed and was trying to analyze my life and find the way out of the realm of sadness and perplexity. One thing that helped me to explore the problem was to photograph girls who had also experienced something like that.

I immersed the heroines in their sleeping gardens and captured them in representations that reflected their psychological state. What we all had in common was that we all felt like we were living in stories that were not written by or about us, while ours were lost somewhere in the high grass.

Awareness of this became a starting point for a long and difficult, but such a necessary and interesting journey. A journey towards my happiness and myself.

I want to show that a difficult period of stagnation, melancholy, and pain that can happen in our lives is also beautiful and poetic, it is a natural part of being a human. Being vulnerable, we are unable to see this beauty at the moment, but I make it possible to look at it later.

© Alena Kakhanovich - Self-portrait in the garden, Minsk, 2017
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Self-portrait in the garden, Minsk, 2017

© Alena Kakhanovich - Sleeping garden, Minsk, 2018
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Sleeping garden, Minsk, 2018

© Alena Kakhanovich - Indecision, Warsaw, 2019
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Indecision, Warsaw, 2019

© Alena Kakhanovich - The long time, Minsk, 2017
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The long time, Minsk, 2017

© Alena Kakhanovich - I have wings, Minsk, 2019
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I have wings, Minsk, 2019

© Alena Kakhanovich - Dangerous interest, Warsaw, 2019
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Dangerous interest, Warsaw, 2019

© Alena Kakhanovich - Jellyfish flower, Warsaw, 2018
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Jellyfish flower, Warsaw, 2018

© Alena Kakhanovich - Wings, Warsaw, 2019
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Wings, Warsaw, 2019

© Alena Kakhanovich - Veins, Warsaw, 2019
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Veins, Warsaw, 2019

© Alena Kakhanovich - Secret dreams, Minsk, 2019
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Secret dreams, Minsk, 2019

© Alena Kakhanovich - Before waking up, Warsaw, 2019
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Before waking up, Warsaw, 2019

© Alena Kakhanovich - Leave all fears in the garden, Minsk, 2018
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Leave all fears in the garden, Minsk, 2018

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