There Round the Corner in the Deep

Through archival imagery and narrative reconstruction, the project examines shifting boundaries between fact and fiction, inviting the viewer to reflect on the cyclical interplay of myth, power, and secrecy.

The story unfolds around the mythology of a closed city—both the place for the development of nuclear weapons and as the spiritual center of Orthodoxy. Named after a swampy river, for a long time the city was associated with a saint-hermit who lived in a forest cell. Later, during the Cold War era, the figure of the wonderworker was replaced by a new protagonist, the nuclear physicist. Today, it's a city where religion and science, faith and militarism are intertwined. It remains in a transitional state between the past and something entirely new and unknown. The Russian government openly claims that Orthodoxy and nuclear technology are aligned, reinforcing the nation's strength and security—a narrative it has promoted for the last 15 years, with such statements becoming increasingly pronounced since 2022. The boundary between fact and fiction becomes less and less visible.

My grandfather was one of the scientists who thought he would go to the city for a year or two, but stayed there for the rest of his life. I never knew him, but inherited his archive of film negatives. He was a passionate photographer, yet, due to strict secrecy, he never documented anything directly related to his work. Traces of the context appear only as scratches, burnt spots, and abstract overexposed frames.

By weaving together pictures from my grandfather's archive, photographs taken by me in and around the city, and staged imagery, I invite the viewer to reflect on the instability of memory about the past and the impact of our actions in present. Moldy, spoiled by time, and treated with acid, photographs become a metaphor for the cyclical nature of religious and state imperatives of the world we need to reinvent.