The Dreamers (searching for love in the darkest times)
2023 - ongoing
In 2022-23, during the war with Ukraine, Russian government started to search for internal enemies who were declared to be sexual minorities. Firstly, legislators banned any propaganda of LGBTQIA+ relations including post on social networks. After that they restricted trangender transition and recognized the whole LGBTQIA+ community as extremist. All that made it very dangerous for the community members to stay in Russia, especially if a person decided to live openly and talk about their identity publicly. Therefore, it is not surprising that a lot of the community members decided to leave the country.
The present portrait-based project displays the couples - representatives of the Russian LGBTQIA+ community who left the country to Georgia, the most popular destinations for Russian migration during wartime because of the visa free regime. The portraits of the couples explore their vulnerable mental state during the current darkest times by capturing their emotions somewhere in limbo, between the old life that has not finished yet and the new chapter that is about to begin.
The couples photographed with their eyes closed. In this condition a person's imagination gains space and so they fight for it to become reality. All the characters of the story are dreaming of peace and hope to find the right path in the context of the ongoing events by the means of love. Is it possible at all with all these scars that the past leaves behind?
The present project is executed with the financial support of Boris Nemtson Fund for Freedom.
