It smells of smoke at home

What remains of a home when one's own country becomes a perpetrator? Who do you become yourself when your own family suddenly feels like strangers?

When I think of home, I think of the the frost that freezes my nostrils while breathing. I smell the smoke from the wood stoves that everyone in my Stepanovka uses for heating, as the endless Russian gas has not yet found its way to our village. Sometimes, in Stepanovka, you cannot see the stars; the smoke from the chimneys mutes all colors and sounds.

Born in Russia the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I moved to Germany in 2019. I told my German friends a lot about this place, of which beyond stereotypes, hardly anyone knew anything. Since the beginning of the war, I doubt whether I truly understood what defined my homeland. It has turned into a collection of dusty memories, and I can no longer say if these memories ever corresponded to reality.

In the week after the war began, I wrote a letter to my parents but I never sent it. We’ve talked about the war once. They would say: about the special operation. The longer it lasts, the deeper the scars become, and the further apart our parallel universes drift. Over the Christmas 2022, I returned for the first time to see my parents and to capture the feelings that accompany me: the pain, the loss of identity and home, and love for people who believe in a different reality. What remains of a home when one's own country becomes a perpetrator? Who do you become when your own family suddenly feels like strangers?

My story is not unique. These breaks go through many Russian families and the whole Russian society. My first trip home was a way to confront myself with the new reality, a challenge and an attempt of a dialogue. But as much as me and my parents want our love to each other to be unconditional, our opinions on the war remain incompatible. And the more we want to ignore this topic, the more present it becomes in our relationship. If I am honest to myself, it would have been easier to burn my Russian passport, than to buy a new ticket home. Nevertheless it is what I’ve done this summer and that what I want to keep doing.

Ekaterina Shulman, a well-known Russian political scientist now living in Germany, once said in an interview that the most meaningful thing we can do in a country where there is a de facto ban on the journalistic profession is to engage in personal conversations and maintain diaries. My work „It smells of smoke at home“ is a visual diary capturing the fading reality that, on the surface, seems to be the same, but it has deep wounds and scars when you look beneath. It’s my farewell to the place of childhood and my illusions. On the other hand, I perceive my photography and the conversations I am having as an attempt to construct a bridge, a personal battle in a war I cannot alter. No matter how hopeless the situation, there must be a perspective for our relationship, just as there must be for my home. In the time of loss, confusion and pain I want to keep photographing my own family, my friends and the society, that I once was a part of. With my work I want to reflect on how this war transforms us and keep the belief that these personal bonds are stronger than the entropy, that tears us apart.