Performing for the Camera as a Process of Self-Improvement

Adopting performance in her photographic work, Russian visual storyteller Ksenia Sidorova looks to reflect upon how social misunderstandings and forced alienation can lead to complex inner conflicts.

Adopting performance in her photographic work, Russian visual storyteller Ksenia Sidorova looks to reflect upon how social misunderstandings and forced alienation can lead to complex inner conflicts.

I met K., a girl whose childhood was considered difficult. She came from an incomplete family and her relatives and peers didn't understand her. Now her body is covered with tattoos, even more so than when I last saw her. I hate you too – this is the tattoo phrase that K. wears on her forehead.

Faced with permanent misunderstandings, it is difficult for a person to break out of the vicious circle of forced alienation. Cardinal external changes are one of the methods to compensate for an inner conflict. Aggressive reactions from society to this difference gives impetus for a new transformation of the person. The need for consolation generates an idea for creating a new body. The process of "self-improvement" becomes endless.

This series presents photographs in which I model situations of misunderstanding and distortion arising in an individual-society-inner world relationship: one between concealment and deliberate demonstration, isolation and inclusion, family and solitude, the permanent and the temporary.

Words and Pictures by Ksenia Sidorova.

Ksenia Sidorova is based in Moscow, Russia, where she works on personal projects that explore the behavioural aspects of the human personality that exists within the framework of mass culture and social stereotypes. Ksenia is a member of the Russian Union of Art Photographers. Find her on PHmuseum and Instagram.

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This feature is part of Story of the Week, a selection of relevant projects from our community handpicked by the PHmuseum curators.