In 2019, I opened the box with my father’s archive, this time with real intention. Many years had passed since his suicide, but only then did I feel I had enough moral strength to face it. I began going through the materials to find an answer to why he did it: to discover some visual signs, some written notes.

Around the same time, I became interested in the photobook as a medium. There were several photobook exhibitions in Moscow then, and I was deeply inspired by how a visually told story could speak about important things. I thought my work with my father’s archive could become a project, and perhaps it would be a photobook. But I still had to figure out what story I wanted to tell.

Over several years of working with the material, I tried different formats and media: installation, exhibitions, even performance. Alongside all of this, the work on the photobook continued. I believe every idea has its most precise medium. When I finally articulated the idea of my project, it became clear that the photobook was the right form.

My work on the project began with a very personal question, and for a long time it was a story about suicide. I couldn’t move past it. Only in 2022 did I finally have a zoom-out moment: I looked at my material more broadly and saw that the project was really about duality, about a double life.

It was my punctum, the moment I encountered the project through a new, wider lens. The thought stunned me: that a person could have a second, secret life, so serious and so full of responsibility, and never be able to talk about it with family or friends.

Duality became the key to all the material. Through it, I could see the project on several levels. I also discovered this duality in myself. I mean a duality of perception, the ability to believe in completely opposing ideas at the same time. I understood that this is a trait shared by many people in Russia today, and that it is the legacy of decades of Soviet propaganda and the suppression of critical thinking. From then on, I developed the project in this direction.

In the early versions, before the concept of duality existed, I built the sequence by looking for visual rhymes between images, and I tried grouping them by theme: mathematics, the collapse of the Soviet Union, uncertainty.

Once the concept of duality took shape, it became clear there would be two parts. Each part is my attempt to reconstruct one of two parallel lives. And life is a process, so I needed to emphasize that sense of process. That’s why each part is arranged chronologically, each with its own structural milestones.

Each of the two parts stands on its own and represents one of the lives, the secret one or the ordinary one. They are different, and yet they coexist in one person. You can lay them side by side or leaf through them together.

In the first part, the structure is held by maps of military conflicts in which the Soviet Union and Russia took part or which they initiated. In the second, it is held by photographs from the family album: I used their backs, with dates and captions.

My experiments with different forms and media gave me the confidence to search for the most precise means of expression, and the courage to let go of images and visual solutions that didn’t support the idea of the book.

The workshop played a major role in how my project took its final shape as a photobook. It was a concentrated and demanding experience: in a short time, we had to go through many stages, make several rough dummies, try different approaches, and find the version that most precisely expressed the idea. The 2025 residency was already the self-publishing period: everything essential in the book had been developed at the workshop and in the work that followed.

What mattered most to me in all of this was working with Yumi. She taught me to look at my own project with an impartial eye and helped me refine the sequence. For me, Yumi herself is an example of an extraordinary capacity for work, of deep, intensive engagement with projects and an approach as precise as that of a sculptor, a jeweler, or a surgeon.

Blow Up Press had always been a dream publisher for me: precise work with the concept, a careful approach to choosing materials, and a distinctive, thoughtfully developed design. I’m very happy that BINOM was published by them.
I know that for larger print runs, a book’s construction is often simplified and design elements are cut to make printing cheaper. I was prepared for that, but what mattered most to me was that the simplifications wouldn’t damage the concept of the book.
Working with Blow Up Press exceeded all my expectations. Their approach was to preserve as much of the self-published edition as possible. There were some simplifications, of course, but they were minimal. The most noticeable is how the inserted family photographs are attached in one of the parts.
The publisher also made some additions that sharpen the idea of the book. For example, thanks to Aneta, a photograph now appears on the inner signatures: lay the two parts side by side, and they form a single image.

Based on the responses and conversations I’ve had about the book, readers find themes and patterns in it that feel familiar, such as secrecy or the work of the secret services.

Some reactions were unexpected. Readers from Asia, particularly from India, where parents are treated with deep respect, asked me why I speak so harshly about my father, why I blame him. I answer this question in the book itself. I don’t want to either blame or justify my father. I haven’t loved him any less for learning more about his life, but I try to look at the past without bias. My life experience and my inner compass tell me that this kind of duality is not something I accept for myself.

My father’s life was shaped by decades of Soviet ideology, propaganda, and the suppression of critical thinking. And, most likely, by his love for mathematics.

I think it is my attempt to understand the past better in order to find my way into the future that resonates with readers in different countries.

This experience sharpened my method: first articulate the idea, then search for the most precise means to express it.

Getting to know other artists' photobooks convinced me even more that family stories can tell us a great deal about a country, a time, and its people. My questions haven’t changed: I still explore history and time through people’s lives.

I know quite a lot about my family’s history, about the lives of my ancestors, who passed through the Russian Empire, the Communist revolution, socialism, wars, and repressions.

Now I am working on a story about inner grounding, confidence, and staying true to oneself — things so many people need today, and that matter to me as an immigrant. At its center is the life of my great-grandfather. He was born under the tsar, married the fiancée of his brother, who was killed in the First World War, lived through the Communist revolution, and studied Indian and Christian philosophy. He was repressed twice and went through Stalin’s Gulag. And through all of this, he helped a great many people around him, stayed true to his beliefs, and never betrayed anyone.

I think it is very important today to answer this question for yourself: what do I stand on in a world where everything changes so fast?

I believe that artists have both the privilege and the mission to speak about difficult subjects, about an uncomfortable past, and to initiate dialogue and set thinking in motion.

The visibility and recognition my project has received have strengthened this belief even more. On the one hand, I feel a greater sense of responsibility. On the other, I feel bolder in exploring and speaking about the subjects that move me: things I feel from the inside and that may be useful and relevant to other people.

I can’t say I held myself back in any way before. But now I see myself more clearly as an author, and I act with more confidence.

Speaking about the photobook scene as a whole would be presumptuous. But I do notice certain processes. For example, more photobooks are appearing that are based on personal stories and family archives. Perhaps artists are thinking more about their identity, about the past that shapes the present and the future. They are asking more questions, trying to make sense of what is happening.

It seems to me that over the past few years, a calendar of photobook events has taken shape in different parts of the world. That’s encouraging, and it probably shows that interest in the medium is growing. I’ve also noticed that in the last year or two, there have been more workshops and educational initiatives for artists who want to make photobooks.

At the same time, there is one very worrying trend: the steadily rising cost of printing an edition. I know that publishers want to work with interesting artists and projects and want to create new photobooks. But they themselves are caught in difficult conditions: rising prices for materials and for contractors' work, and a rising cost of living overall. All of this pushes artists toward self-publishing and makes it hard to count on a book being printed in a large run.