Polina Titarenko (1999, Tver) based in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. She started her education at Academy of Art and Documentary Photography «Fotografika» In 2021. Her photographs contemplate vulnerability of the present. Topics she tends to gravitate towards are power possession and religious control.
Deportation | In 1943 the Soviet leadership forced the Karachays to leave their lands in the North Caucasus and move to Central Asia. Officially, they were deported for collaborating with German occupiers and opposing the Soviet regime but these charges were later dropped. During the night the Soviets cordoned off villages and ordered people to leave their homes under the threat of execution. They were only allowed to bring enough food to last them a few days. Thus, the Karachays spent several weeks on the road, suffering from hunger and disease in overcrowded cattle cars. In Central Asia the people were separated and resettled around several regions of the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs. The living conditions were extremely difficult. They lived in dugouts and relied entirely on their belongings brought from the Caucasus. In the first few years of exile the population decreased by a quarter. Only 13 years later, in 1956, the Karachays were rehabilitated and allowed to return to their homeland.
Khurzuk, Uchkulan and Kart-Dzhurt auls used to be the cultural and economic center of Karachay, but after the deportation they fell into desolation. Now, only three thousand people live there, many of whom are elderly survivors of the deportation or were born in Central Asia. Despite having spent much of their lifetimes in deportation, they retain their culture and language. Centuries old log houses are still standing in the auls, despite the fact that during deportation they were burned, dismantled for firewood, and turned into barns and outbuildings. Many of the houses are now dilapidated, but people kept living in them until recently. The Karachays’ houses were also plundered, but they managed to preserve their antiquities by bringing them along into exile and then bringing them back to the Caucasus.
The Russian government recognized the deportation of the Karachays as genocide in 1991. While the deportation affected all families and is painful to remember, the Karachays are convinced that their story is unjustly forgotten and strive to tell it. https://glish.org/
Environmental Melancholia | In this time of climate crisis when intervention is urgent and still possible, I have created a series of ‘memorial’ landscapes to injured and dying environments using visual metaphors to celebrate our natural world, call attention to the precariousness of our global ecosystem, and provide an opportunity to contemplate unthinkable experiences of environmental devastation.
As the natural world suffers increased destruction, our physical survival is threatened, annihilation anxiety rises, and we retreat into denial and inactivity. We must raise our emotional connection to the climate crisis to move from the position of passive bystanders stuck in environmental melancholia to engaged witnesses.
Inspired by and reacting to the idealized, seductive beauty of Hudson River School landscape painters, the photomontages are, at first glance, pictorial and idyllic. I hope viewers will be drawn in by the splendor of the landscape and the ease of relating to a familiar subject. A closer look challenges the sublime. I intend to puncture complacency around the “ongoingness” of our environment. I want observers to look beyond their expectations and ask, “Wait, what is happening here?”
I alter the colors and scale with editing tools and materially affix a photograph of a flourishing nature scene on rice paper onto a base print of a depleted environment. I link the two photographs through a color relationship or composition – for example, a mountain’s curve to a line in a stream – and secure them with photo corners. These postcards from the past reference souvenirs gathered in a scrapbook for remembrance: our natural world reduced to a nostalgic relic.
Our planet is in a precarious place, disintegrating as we lose glaciers, animals, trees, and fertile land. I attempt to stop things from vanishing, fix the harm, restore the losses, and put the land back together. I tear natural resources from one photograph and hastily connect them to another depleted environment with Japanese washi tape, creating a visceral experience of damage and repair. www.donnabassin.com
And I Wander | And I Wander is an ongoing project depicting the reciprocal relationship between personal identity and place, two concepts that interact along an experiential spectrum from blissful belonging to painful alienation. As an immigrant in America for three decades, my continuing quest to feel at home here has been the impetus for this series. It’s a journey that leads me to explore the idea of “America” – its national patchwork of historical, social, and cultural norms – and understand how that relates to me and vice versa.
To produce the project, I cut carnival mirrors to resemble my silhouette and placed the nebulous humanoid within the varied landscapes. This chameleonic being dreamy echoes its surroundings. Yet, depending on each image’s relation to the camera and immediate environment, the chameleonic presence is never fully incorporated, which waxes and wanes in visibility. Balancing the ‘yang’ of these landscapes’ tranquil stillness is the potent melancholy ‘yin’ of this solitary figure: conveying my unreconciled yearning for a sense of belonging in America. WensPhoto.com
Bring Me A Dream | Bring Me A Dream is a collaborative semi-documentary series investigating inter-generational memories in a family carrying the Alzheimer’s gene. When the eldest generation moves on, where do those histories go? What does it mean for a familial line to experience a disease that steals their memory and isolates them from everything and everyone they once knew?
Through lens-based media, I look ahead to the frightening future we must face while simultaneously glancing backward at what once was for multiple generations. People, objects, music, and locations reference childhood memories that are forever out of reach. Using the family archive, I attempt to name these histories from my mind and Grandma’s fading one. This inter-generational mapping unearths additional investigations on whiteness, class, and the meaning of heritage in a family with deep New England roots. Primarily using a digital camera and the vertical frame, I capture this period in our lives as a keepsake for my family and a call to action for others experiencing the same tragedy. Images from this series document the caretaker's essential role, the routine's burden, and the lasting effects on loved ones. With more questions than answers, I wonder what the future holds and if this disease will live with us for generations.
“Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen
Give him two lips like roses and clover
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over
Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own
Please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.” (Mr. Sandman by the Chordettes, referencing the title of the series) www.hannah-latham.com
The Moon Belongs to Everyone | The Moon Belongs to Everyone speaks to the experience of immigration and diaspora, to the physical and emotional implications of reimagining home, belonging, and community while mourning what is lost in that process. A first-generation Iranian-American, Mehrfar grew up on Long Island, navigating the challenges of reconciling two distinct cultures. Shortly after her thirtieth birthday, she emigrated to Australia, a relocation that left her feeling out of place. She assumed her return to New York a decade later would be a homecoming; instead, she felt estranged, time away rendering the landscape unfamiliar. Though Mehrfar’s personal experience informs her approach in The Moon Belongs to Everyone, the work adopts a universal perspective rooted in the evocative rather than the specific.
Landscapes, still lifes, color fields, and portraits coalesce to form an unsettling, enigmatic environment. Attempts to anchor place and meaning are repeatedly eluded, speaking to the uncertainty at the heart of dislocation. From snow-covered to lushly tropical, landscapes present “place” as anywhere and nowhere. Familiar, everyday still lifes take on metaphorical significance as memories and associations imbue their meaning. Alluring, vibrant color fields demand continued looking though the vague forms captured avoid identification. Individuals isolated in similarly indeterminate backgrounds suggest a shared searching, a community defined by experience rather than borders. References to the moon and sun—and the distinctive quality of light produced by these celestial sources—weave through the project, offering unexpected moments of grounding and familiarity in the otherworldly rather than the terrestrial.
This dynamic, non-traditional installation of The Moon Belongs to Everyone echoes the atmosphere of disorientation and instability conjured in the work. Connections between pictures develop, recede, and emerge anew, eliciting personal narratives based on both the viewer’s perspective and experience of the installation’s distinctive rhythms. In this way, the shared pursuit of home, inclusion, and community—especially in light of uprooting—is intimately connected to the individual, creating a space where the personal and universal simultaneously coexist.
A monograph of The Moon Belongs to Everyone was published by GOST Books in 2021. The project also includes an immersive eight-channel video installation. – Allie Haeusslein
The Yukon - Full Spectrum Infrared | In June of 2022, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to return to the Yukon territory of Canada, and this time, I brought along my Full Spectrum Infrared Fujifilm X-T2. Showcasing the natural world in a whole new light, using this technology was an experiment in exploring the familiar through science & imagination.
The camera is a regular Fujifilm X-T2 mirrorless camera, with the Infrared & UV blocking filters removed. As a result, the sensor is now capable of capturing light within the ‘full-spectrum’ of wavelengths. The resulting visual image is a hybrid of ‘visible’ and infrared light being captured by the sensor.
As for the colours themselves, the invisible infrared light of CIR (camera infrared technology) can be ‘seen’ by shifting the ‘visible’ spectrum over. Near infrared wavelengths become visible as red, while red wavelengths appear as green, green as blue, and so forth. Because living vegetation particularly reflects infrared light intensely, most visibly ‘green’ vegetation registers as red. Non-living things like rocks, sky, buildings, water reflect significantly less infrared light, as well as other wavelengths of light (UV), and thus appear normal or slightly different in ‘visible’ appearance. www.coreyjisenor.com
Motherland. Far Beyond the Polar Circle | This is the story of a town, which was built upon the bones of Soviet prisoners, a city in which many deported Latvians once lived. My mum was born in Igarka in 1952, which is in Siberia, in Russia, 163 km north of the Arctic Circle. On June 14, 1941 my grandma was deported to Siberia. She lived there until the summer of 1956 and hasn‘t spoken about it ever since. There was just a sense of wisdom and misunderstanding about the past, much like the landscapes that hold this dark and silent history and testimonies frozen in time.
Grandma’s first husband was the First Commander of the Guard Squadron of the independent Latvia. He was considered an enemy of the USSR and taken to Sevurallag, the Soviet gulag camp in Sverdlovsk region where he died from cold, starvation and humiliation in the winter of January 31, 1942. He was separated from my grandma as most of the men from their families and wives with a promising hope to meet again. After many years of surviving alone in Siberia, my grandma met my grandpa in Igarka. He was from Smolensk in Russia and expelled on July 29, 1950 from Johvi, Estonia.
During the next deportations in 1948-1951, thousands more civilians were forcefully moved to Igarka from their homeland and newly occupied territories of the USSR. Many of them died from the cold and poor conditions in the winter of 1948-1949.
I went to Igarka during the winter of 2019-2020 when the average temperature was -40C, to pay tribute to those who survive, survived or sadly didn’t, and to those who still live there and were forced to start living there 70 or more years ago in these weather conditions.
In the last decades, the seemingly infinite landscapes of the Yenisei River and Siberian taiga have led Igarka and Northern Siberia in Russia to be seen as a place of romance. But the vast expanse holds many memories of the millions whose lives were affected by Stalin’s Gulag labour system. Today, of course, the community in Igarka has its own hopes and dreams for the future. Residents hope for the revival of the railway, they hope that one day they will become the oil capital of Siberia with many new jobs in oil, mineral and natural gas fields, they hope for the revival of the agriculture and timber industry, expansion of the airport and free fishing without the regulatory burdens of today.
I used a Soviet-made medium format camera - the Salut - with Mir lenses which could become just as unreliable as the whole Soviet system and therefore added additional conceptual significance to the project.
This is a chapter of the trilogy in which each part deals separately with the notions and meanings of Homeland, Fatherland and Motherland from a deeply personal and autobiographical perspective.
Georgs Avetisjans and Milda Books just launched the Kickstarter campaign “Motherland. Far Beyond the Polar Circle” - a journey far beyond the polar circle that brings to light memories of Soviet deportees and contemporary stories through a photobook www.farbeyondthepolarcircle.com
Broken Bridges | Broken Bridges began as a documentary project using a variety of materials. I used my own images of my Nana’s home and abandoned Westinghouse Nuclear Research sites around Pittsburgh, audio recordings of my interviews with my nana, found imagery, and documents to create a dialogue between myself and my Nana about my Uncle Jimmy dying of cancer. Jimmy worked for Westinghouse's Nuclear Energy division headquartered down the street from his home in Pittsburgh. During his time there, he was a proud laborer that worked on cleaning out the flooded reactors at Three Mile Island (TMI), as well as a flooded reactor in Belgium. In 2017 while on his deathbed, Jimmy attempted to join a lawsuit against Westinghouse in hopes of using his portion of the settlement to pay for his cancer treatment. Jimmy provided work IDs, and work itineraries, and even recalled a time when his hazmat suit was ripped open by an employee who was having a panic attack while they were in a flooded reactor chamber. Jimmy was denied settlement as the legal team in charge of distributing settlement could not prove the workers assigned to TMI and other reactors were exposed to material that could cause such health problems as the ones he was experiencing.
“During the Job at Doel Nuclear Plant, A Laborer had a violent panic attack which required me to physically remove him from the bottom of Reactor Vessel. Upon completion of removal, I noticed my plastic face mask had a huge crack/break in it. The Health/Physics Man told me “not to worry about it”
-taken directly from Jimmy Fitchwells legal claim paperwork.
One of the major functions of Art is to speak truth to Power. There needs to be a conversation concerning the casualties of innovation driven by capitalism and the consequences that are dumped on to the working population. In cases like my uncle, they are kept from the truth entirely. The only way I was given access to this story was by interviewing my Nana and going through documents my uncle Jimmy happened to keep to remember his time working for Westinghouse. In fact, there is little to no documentation of Westinghouse's involvement with TMI available on the internet–everything I've learned is from documents that Jimmy happened to save and interviews with my nana and former employees of Westinghouse in the Pittsburgh area. The reason I've spent years pursuing this creative work is that it is the only option I have to express what little was left by Westinghouse. In circumstances where the corporation is able to determine “truth”, such as the Westinghouse settlement, the outcome is that the prior truth of the people swept up in these systems is erased. There are no accessible records of what material Jimmy handled, and thus the “truth” is that he did not handle any material that could have caused his specific cancer. Jimmy’s truth may be lost forever, and it is because of this loss that my work here must be creative and speculative in nature. In a way, I’m attempting to create mythology as a counterpoint to the fact received via the official story. Such lost battles are common and becoming more so. The relevance of these conversations and the power of the myths crafted therein, increase in tandem with both the authority of the corporation(s) and the severity of their negligence. My hope is that by presenting this work to as many people as possible they will feel the pain my Nana felt, and will be encouraged to look around them and understand that this story is not rare and that it is being retold all around them every day. It is not a conspiracy. It is in the nature of corporations to create these disasters as we allow them to function in this country. www.devinfitchwell.com
The Romance of the Fungus World | In "The Romance of the Fungus World", researchers Rolfe write that in literature, folklore and science, fungus are often associated with pestilence, death and decay, and their physicality appears creepy and repulsive. In this series, I move away from the mycophobic images of fungoid entities in terms of conventional ideas and show their ability to be creative and hospitable. I depict fungus as being like unearthly creatures, as in myths and theories about their cosmic origin. https://sites.google.com/view/nikasandler/
I began photographing 12 years ago as a form of self-therapy. The death of my mother plunged me into a downward spiral until a chance encounter with nature set me on the path to recovery. Its vastness gave me a sense of perspective, while its majesty reignited in me a sense of wonder and adventure. Initially, the urge to photograph was born of an urgent and desperate desire to prolong the serenity that nature brought. Over time, I began to enjoy simply being in the forests, lakes and meadows.
The scenes I photograph are set in Hokkaido, Nagano and Aomori, Japan. Each of these locations are very different but united by their extreme natural beauty. I am drawn to Hokkaido because I used to visit it often as a child, while Nagano and Aomori are known for their cherry blossoms. I often photograph at intense moments, at extreme temperatures or during snowstorms.
Now more than ever, we need to alleviate the stress in our lives and heal. Studies show that nature, or even images of nature, can provide symptom relief, lower stress levels, and reduce depression and anxiety. I hope these photographs of the natural world provide a brief reprieve from life’s harsh realities, by reminding us of the beauty in all things delicate and fierce. www.xuanhuing.com
MELT | MELT is a series of photographs of items that no longer exist. It is an ongoing study of impermanence and erasure. The beautifully fine crafted antique or pre-owned items I photographed for this project had been merchandise in my father’s antique store. Like other antique dealers and jewelers, he saves unsold or damaged sterling silver items and jewelry jumbled together in a large barrel until the market price of silver and gold is high enough to make a profit, and then sends them to the smelter to “melt”.
Most recently, with antiques and sterling silver items barely desirable, my father decided to send to the smelter many pieces I thought were too beautiful to be destined for this fate. As the barrel filled, I was struck that each item, with its own story, would forever be gone. I felt an urgency to document this growing collection, and thankfully my father gave me the time I needed to photograph them.
These pieces, created to last a lifetime for everyday use or special occasions, were about to disappear forever, many with specific uses that are now obsolete. Customs and tastes have changed. As I photographed it struck me that this act of melting would not only wipe away people’s treasures - it would eliminate the memories of these objects that are part of a vanished collective culture. Now my images hold the memories and histories of these once treasured objects, and I will continue to photograph then as long as the “melt” barrel is being filled. www.bethburstein.com
Great Expectations | I use photography to document the things around me. My work is a balance of reality and fiction. It is the process by which I choose to explore the people, things, and world around me. My sensitive perception helps me to look at things differently. I always like to pay attention to details. Focus on details keeps us in the present and distracts us from the things that are going on around us.
Taking the theme of islands as its starting point, this photo series “Great Expectations” traces a broad arc from paradisiacal expectations of island living to tourism in times of the climate crisis. How could island life - which we always associate with a relaxing place of longing - take place in the future? rothlaura.com
I try to capture subtle or banal moments that might be representative of larger themes in my photographs. I aim to crystallize fleeting moments into a static memory that can be looked back on at any point, and I try to think of my photos as memories themselves. These particular photos are from a collection titled "You Wave Goodbye". They're centered around the challenges of the transitions I've made within the last 5 years to get to this point in my life, and focus on living in central Connecticut. danmorophoto.com.
Ghost | Platinum photographs are considered to be the most permanent of all photographic processes, but they have a little-known side e!ect. Their key ingredient, the noble metal platinum, reacts with other paper if left in prolonged contact. After decades, a faint mirror image appears on the nearby surface. In this project, these found “ghost” images are rephotographed and then made them permanent again as modern platinum prints. The intention of this circular process is to harness the mysterious visual qualities of the source images and point to a surprising wrinkle in the fabric of photographic representation. According to current research, the original platinum prints are not depleted in this process, meaning they can theoretically reproduce themselves infinitely if given enough time. andymattern.com
Out Here On Our Own | Rock Springs, Wyoming is a boomtown. Although due to its economy being historically tied to the extraction of resources from the earth, the town has seen several stark bust periods. This boom or bust cycle is the focus of the book, “Out Here On Our Own: An Oral History of an American Boomtown,” written by J.J. Anselmi. I was commissioned to give ocular proof of the words gathered through countless interviews conducted for the book. Although this work is focused on the community of Rock Springs, it could be about any town in America. Hundreds of places in this country are going bust, or are about to, and this is where the true story lies. Rock Springs is home to massive Halliburton and Schlumberger facilities, now abandoned. This economic fallout has led to far above average rates of drug use and suicide.
The people of Rock Springs are resilient. It takes a certain kind of strength to live in such an unforgiving place. In fact, the high desert winds are known in local folklore as being the last straw, a deciding factor to the area’s high suicide rate. Although, it’s far more likely to be the lack of opportunity.
Rock Springs has long called itself, “Home of 56 Nationalities,” but it is far from diverse. Racism in the United States is nothing new, and Rock Springs is no different. In 1885, Rock Springs was home to a massacre of Chinese immigrants working in a local coal mine. The emergence of Donald Trump did not help ease any tensions in an area with an already checkered past. Through good and bad, the people of this community persevere. Rock Springs, Wyoming. Anytown, USA www.jordanutley.com
Winds of Change | Winds of Change reflects on a difficult and uncertain time in Britain’s history and my own personal fears and anxiety about not only Britain’s future, but the future of the world and its effects on those close to me.
The old world is dying, the one that we knew has gone. As echos of 1930s Europe engulf Asia and the United States, it has become clear that the balance of power and future of humanity has changed. Where Britain belongs in this new world is yet to be found. www.samuelfradley.com
One of Us | The Republic of Dagestan is one of the regions of Russia where patriarchal worldview and traditions dominate in society, imposing restrictions on a person's behavior, hobbies, and appearance. The restrictions are accepted and considered to be natural here, as people’s choices are strongly guided by public opinion. But however traditional a society might be, and however negatively dissent might be viewed, there are always people out there who seek a different life. The heroes of the project are young people of Dagestan who are not afraid to be different and challenge conservative social norms and stereotypes every day despite the fact that most people condemn them. madinagadjieva.com
Divine Decay | Divine Decay is a series of photographic/mixed media constructions informed and inspired by holy texts, illuminated manuscripts, death memorials, alchemical/occult symbols, sacred geometry, religious icons and Renaissance panel paintings.
The work deals with memory, remembrance and decay and tackles issues such as spirituality which is often neglected but also essential for the well-being and inner balance of the individual in our hypertechnological and increasingly materialistic society.
The gritty and damaged appearance of the images alludes to fragility, mortality and the transient nature of earthly existence. Although such subjects are generally perceived as rather morbid and depressing, reflection on their significance could prove to be an illuminating way of reflecting on life. www.konmark.com
Beach Boulevard | This project is a meditation on the constitution of the local and its effects. For example, the prioritization of economic production and consumption at “the local scale” is known as fiscal localism. As a normative political philosophy, constitutional localism is posited as the solution to political polarization and social unrest, shifting governance to “the local level.” Beyond/beneath/within (it’s all a matter of context) federalism, we can have different forms of localism. Furthermore, one’s views might be cast aside for being “localist,” due to preference for a place, a space, that limits the vision of possibilities of engagement with the wider world.
All of these things make “the local.” In considering these localisms and cognates, localism can also correspond to a site of reflection and analysis connecting fragments of experience that bind people, capital, and technology.
Southern California is a particularly apposite laboratory for building such vernacular connections. Tracts of homes, of trailers, the grid of streets and highways extending into the horizon, oil fields, industrial plants, strip malls, and personalities can all be precisely photographed. On my “minimal adventures” along the capillary avenues of Huntington Beach, California, Beach Boulevard served as my orientational axis. This project, culled from tens of thousands of photographs, archives, and observations, is therefore a multimedia meditation on place, but also a societal condition.
