Take me home, country roads

A photographic project exploring overlooked places and quiet details shaped by displacement and memory. Walking unfamiliar landscapes, Potapenko works between analogue and digital to capture fragments of in-betweenness, presence, and absence.

In her work, Potapenko explores the overlooked and the forgotten – small places, quiet details, and moments that exist between presence and absence. Originally from Ukraine and now living in Wales, her practice is deeply shaped by themes of dislocation, memory, and the search for a sense of place. Walking long distances through unfamiliar landscapes, she enters a discursive, meditative state, allowing herself to dissolve into the world around her. As an observer rather than a participant, Potapenko lets her curiosity guide her toward textures, traces, and remnants of life.

Potapenko works primarily with analogue film, drawn to its tactile and uncertain nature, but she also incorporates digital tools, using both a mobile phone and a digital camera as part of her process. This blend of formats allows for spontaneity while preserving a strong sense of atmosphere and materiality.

Her images reflect the quiet tension of in-betweenness – between past and present, belonging and estrangement. Capturing small fragments of life, she evokes a larger, half-remembered dream or memory, with images that speak to the refugee experience and invite quiet reflection on place, identity, and what remains when everything familiar is left behind.