“Space-Time”

A conscious awareness or sensation of a physical environment, region or location is usually referred to a “sense of place”. This incorporates the emotional response to the place as well as its physical nature. The places I find special and visit are not always the most beautiful at first glance. Yet, my emotional connection to them allows me to present them in ways and on different levels from the first-time visitor.

Our summer house in Belarus has become such a place for me. When our daughters
were born, we bought with my husband small house on the Vilia riverbank. That was also the village, where my husband often spent vacations when he was a child. Coming there,
I was creating my own photographic archive, shaping the future processes of remember- ing for my daughters.
When I found the archive photos of my husband’s family at that very place, it appeared to me that it is not only about us experiencing ourselves in a place, in a specific space and time, rather it is about the place itself. The place has turned into a hero, connecting dif- ferent generations. The sense of place of the past has appeared to be in conversation with the present, maybe even the future, in a bid to ensure its reproduction.
By combining the archive and contemporary photos, I reflect how one and the same
place possesses memories of different generations. The archives have become fluid and memory is realised as a process that can be revisited and updated.
The images of the objects from the past saved for the memory are also questioning the medium of constructing our memories and connection of a sense of place to a sense of an object.
By mixing archive pictures, adding still life photos of the memorable objects I reconnect the space and the time.

2017-2020