Blood is thicker than water

This project is a tribute to the women in my family and the ancestral home that shaped us. Blending memory, dreams, and family archives, I recreate and observe intimate daily moments.

As far back as I can remember, women have always been more present in my family than men. I embarked on this project to photograph my grandmother, my mother, and her sisters in their ancestral village house, where they were born and raised.

As a child, I spent much time in this house, where women did most household and daily chores. The place came alive with their presence, filled with the smells of cooking, gossip, and laughter. I admired this inner world that no one could see. Their ceaseless activity was synonymous with life, and I found great beauty in it. As I grew older, I wanted to reconstruct these moments to capture and share them.

My memories and dreams, along with family albums, served as the basis for recreating many everyday scenes; others remained unchanged, allowing me to observe the women of my family closely and capture them in their natural state. From this universe that nurtured me, I created a visual time capsule. The longer I worked on the project, the more I realized how much I resembled them. “Blood is thicker than water”, indeed, as a Slavic proverb says. To honor my lineage, I included self-portraits, feeling the need to claim a piece of this larger story, to find my place, and to understand what it means to be with them, for them, and after them.

The desire to preserve this part of my history became even more significant: since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I had to say goodbye to this place and leave my country. The world so dear to me is now gone, as is my childhood. However, I managed to keep the most important part of it within me: the feeling of belonging.