Nostalgia

it’s the 11th year since I left Russia. the last time I was home was in 2021.

 

the strange thing is, I feel more Russian now than I ever did there. when I saw the photographs sent by the participants of our collective zine, I was struck by the typicality of the images captured by different cameras.

perhaps this is exactly that untranslatable thing, our collective, image-based, lived experience that we unconsciously notice and transmit to each other and to the outside world.

how do people and the reality around them bleed into each other? how can ant hills of cheap-build apartment blocks coexist with truly big dreams?

 

and what am I, exactly, after all these years, when they no longer see me as one of them, yet I’m still fluent in everything they leave unsaid?