My art began where words failed me—in the silence of a Russian boarding school. Images were my first language: my escape, my tool for self exploration. I didn't find my voice by talking, but by watching. The camera gave me...
Read MoreMy art began where words failed me—in the silence of a Russian boarding school. Images were my first language: my escape, my tool for self exploration. I didn't find my voice by talking, but by watching. The camera gave me that. It was my shield to hide behind and my only true way to connect.
This history imprinted my vision with a specific literacy: the ability to translate the unspoken narratives held in spaces and bodies. I find beauty in brokenness; I read scars as maps of personal journeys.
The struggles with my own emotions and life choices forged in me a hard-won fluency in the most difficult language of all: human complexity.
My own path has been anything but straight. I've lived half my life as an immigrant in several counties. Constantly rebuilding myself, I've learned that what others might see as damage in me, or in the world, is not an end—it is the very substance from which I build.
I found myself strongly inclined to explore the topic of sexuality, as its appeal and complexity fascinated me. I viewed it as a powerful force that can also be fragile and destructive.
Sometimes I find my own photos "disturbing", but they never leave me numb. My freedom, that costly freedom, lives entirely in my art.
