Around and about

Over the years, I kept coming back to memories of the family dacha. I could smell our wooden house in other houses, longing for tea from the samovar and the pile of granite stones, which I used to go through in search of treasures. In the place where the dacha was, I felt a strong unity with myself, my parents and my grandmother. With the world around me. As a child, I liked to go to the end of the road that led to the dacha house and look curiously around the uncharted corner. I cherished the memorable fragments even when I grew up, when my grandmother was gone, and joint trips to the dacha became a thing left behind.

When the new owners demolished the house, I realized that I had lost something more than a physical object. The image of the dacha concentrated on the entire flow of memories associated with the past. Apart from my own feelings, I had nothing to rely on. There are no images of the house in the family archive. Only photographs of the plot.

To reconstruct the symbols of the past and to feel like a child again, like a pilgrim, I went with my camera to the village where the dacha stood. The archive photo acts as a guide to memories that change with me.