There Round the Corner in the Deep

I reflect on how secrecy shapes the history of a place. In the city where I grew up, a key site of the Soviet nuclear program, official silence allowed myths, religion, and personal stories to fill the gaps. Today, when nuclear threats are

The project centers on the mythology of a closed city (ZATO) where I grew up. During the Cold War, the city disappeared from maps, and the figure of a saint-hermit who once lived there was replaced by a nuclear physicist. Hidden in dense forests, it became one of the key sites in the development of the hydrogen bomb. My grandfather was one of the scientists involved in the nuclear program. I never knew him, but inherited his archive of film negatives. Due to strict secrecy, his photographs lack direct documentation; they depict only family and nature, yet are marked by traces of anxiety—scratches, burnt spots, and mold.
Now this city is named Sarov and it is a place where religion and science, faith and militarism are intertwined. The government and the church use both Orthodoxy and nuclear technology in their propaganda as symbols of power and oppression. The boundary between fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred. The forest, a central motif throughout the project, acts as both scene and metaphor—a symbolic space of the unknown, where memory mutates, histories dissolve, and futures emerge in fragments.
The city is still obscured by the trees and bushes, like the Sleeping Beauty’s castle. By weaving together my grandfather's archive with photographs taken by me in and around the city, and staged images based on facts, legends, and speculation, I reconstruct a discontinuous narrative in which private histories collide with collective myths.