Beyond the Bend in the Abyss

Through historical imagery and narrative reconstruction, the initiative investigates the evolving boundaries between reality and fiction, encouraging the observer to contemplate the cyclical interaction of myth, authority, and confidentiality.

The narrative revolves around the lore of an isolated city—both a site for the advancement of nuclear armaments and a spiritual haven of Orthodoxy. Named after a marshy river, the city was long tied to a hermit saint who resided in a wooded cell. Subsequently, during the Cold War, the character of the miracle worker was superseded by a fresh focal point, the nuclear scientist. Today, it stands as a metropolis where religion and science, belief and militarism intersect. It persists in a state of flux between the historical and something entirely novel and uncharted. The Russian authorities overtly assert that Orthodoxy and nuclear advancement are interconnected, bolstering national fortitude and safety. The demarcation between reality and myth increasingly becomes indistinct.

My grandfather was among the scientists who envisioned he would spend a year or two in the city, yet he remained there for the entirety of his life. I never had the chance to know him, but I inherited his collection of film negatives. He was an avid photographer; however, due to stringent confidentiality, he never captured anything overtly linked to his profession. Signs of the circumstances emerge only as scratches, scorched areas, and vague overexposed images.

By intertwining images from my grandfather’s collection, photographs taken by myself in and around the city, alongside staged visuals, I invite the observer to contemplate the fragility of memory regarding the past and the consequence of our current actions. Moldy, deteriorated over time, and treated with acid, photographs serve as a symbol for the cyclical essence of both religious and governmental imperatives of the world we need to reinvent.