Yulia Spiridonova: Wayward Son – LENSCRATCH

This week on LENSCRATCH visitor editor Yana Nosenko brings collectively the work of 4 photographers tracing the post-Soviet situation. We are happy to current a choice of tasks and conversations with Anna Guseva, Margo Ovcharenko, Anastasia Tsayder, and Yulia Spiridonova.

Post Co-op

This exhibition brings collectively 4 photographic practices that hint the post-Soviet situation as a lived actuality formed by area, worry, self-discipline, displacement, and the physique. Across panorama, portraiture, and long-term documentary work, these artists study what stays after methods collapse or harden, when “home” turns into unstable and visibility is negotiated relatively than assured.

Soviet microdistricts re-emerge as overgrown Arcadias, the place vegetation quietly reclaims utopian structure and transforms management into unpredictability. The psychological aftermath of the Nineties seems as an inherited inside local weather, the place violence and instability depart lasting marks on identification. In the closed world of girls’s soccer, queer youth discover solidarity and refuge inside strict boundaries, whereas the encircling surroundings stays hostile. In exile, immigrant communities kind fragile “spaces of appearance,” providing short-term belonging whereas intensifying the strain between survival and assimilation.

Together, these works communicate to endurance below unstable situations: how individuals adapt, cover, re-root, and proceed. Here, “home” is neither assured nor singular. It is overtaken by crops, haunted by reminiscence, protected by guidelines, looked for in diaspora, and frequently reconstructed, one picture at a time. — Yana Nosenko

Yulia Spiridonova is a multimedia, lens-based artist working throughout images, collage, and set up. With over a decade of expertise as a photograph editor and editorial photographer, she has collaborated with shoppers akin to PORT Magazine, Esquire Russia, RBC Magazine, and L’Officiel. Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured in publications together with Dazed Digital, The Calvert Journal, PhMuseum, LensCulture, A New Nothing, and others. Yulia holds a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate and an MFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is the recipient of the Anderson Ranch MassArt Fellowship (2023), the Abelardo Morell MassArt Photography Thesis Prize (2024), the MASS MoCA Studios MassArt Fellowship (2024), and the MassArt Postgraduate Fellowship (2025). She is at the moment based mostly in Boston, Massachusetts, the place she works as a Teaching Assistant in Harvard University’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies and teaches a number of programs as adjunct college on the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Follow Yulia Spiridonova on Instagram: @liver_lovers

Wayward Son

Wayward Son examines up to date post-Soviet displacement by way of the intimate social landscapes shaped by those that left their house nations below authoritarian stress and the gradual erosion of civic life. The people who seem on this work – Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, Armenians, amongst others – have been propelled into motion not by aspiration however by necessity.

Hannah Arendt describes the area of appearances as one thing that doesn’t exist prematurely. It comes into being every time individuals collect, communicate, and act within the presence of each other – and disappears as quickly as they disperse. Wayward Son dissects considered one of these precarious areas, permitting the viewer to soak up into the world of immigrants whose lives are formed by displacement, unfamiliarity, and the exigent necessity to regulate socially, geographically and culturally.

The aftermath of exile produces a nonlinear existence through which authorized vulnerability, shifting visa situations, language limitations, and household separation render the longer term provisional. Wayward Son operates within the historic shadow of earlier expulsions – most famously the Philosophers’ Ship of 1922. While departures at present unfold below a brand new set of geopolitical situations, the timeless follow of immigration perseveres ubiquitously and stays related. 

The images in Wayward Son, made in Massachusetts and Florida, observe immigrant Russian-speaking communities in micro-detail, encapsulating the area of appearances as a nostalgia haven whereby timelines are fractured. Many of those encounters originate in nameless digital channels – primarily Telegram teams – the place newcomers seek for housing, authorized recommendation, emotional solidarity, or just the consolation of a well-known language. The cultural unity of this area permits an ephemeral escape from undesirable actuality, but its evanescence prolongs intense emotional rigidity with the “real world”. The area of appearances artificially satisfies the inherent human want to be seen, thereby protecting figures sane, however submits them to the unfeasibility of correct assimilation. At the identical time, the work acknowledges the braveness required to inhabit life below displacement and persist despite all odds. By attending to this dichotomy, Wayward Son captures emotions of celebration and contemporaneous melancholy, apprehending the figures’ infinitely advanced world.

Ultimately, Wayward Son views displacement because the sluggish work of re-rooting after being pulled from the bottom. People don’t develop again in neat traces or predictable varieties. They take maintain the place the soil is free sufficient to allow them to breathe – and conceal the place the solar is simply too shiny to outlive. The work holds this picture whereas concurrently urgent in opposition to it and entertaining doubts – should adaptation require concealment? Is it ever doable to regulate to a brand new solar with out burning – to survive predestined acquainted habits in an more and more demanding world?

Yana Nosenko: At the outset, what had been you hoping to know or take a look at by way of Wayward Son, and the way did these intentions shift as soon as the work started?

Yulia Spiridonova: Photographic communities—whether or not outlined by nationality, tradition, faith, or shared identification—have lengthy served as a well-known framework inside up to date photographic follow. The style is each legible and compelling, providing a structured option to discover belonging and collective expertise. Over time, nonetheless, I grew to become more and more concerned about the opportunity of documenting a group that isn’t tightly linked, however as an alternative held collectively by displacement, circumstance, and shared emotional situations.

During my earlier stays within the United States, I consciously averted Russian circles, distancing myself as a lot as doable from my nationwide identification and, in some ways, rejecting it altogether. This return unfolded otherwise. Moving to the U.S. alone, I skilled a profound sense of isolation. About six months after arriving in Boston, I created a Spotify playlist titled “Longing for Home.” That preliminary feeling of homesickness grew to become the emotional level of departure for this challenge. I needed to know what I would nonetheless acknowledge or resonate with within the tradition I had left behind. I discovered myself suspended between recollections of one thing genuinely good from my previous and a robust want to withstand a tradition I felt deeply upset by. That rigidity shaped the muse of the challenge.

I approached the work in an virtually anthropological method, observing how different Russian-speaking immigrants round me lived, how they shaped relationships, and the way they navigated unfamiliar social and spatial contexts. At its core, the challenge emerged from curiosity—a want to see who constituted this dispersed group and what certain it collectively past nationality.

I started the challenge with out clear expectations, which made what I encountered particularly revealing. Most of the individuals who responded to my messages or group posts had been politically and ideologically aligned with my very own place. Despite variations in age, occupation, and social background, they shared a pervasive sense of instability. As immigrants out of the country, many carried anxieties round visibility, legality, and belonging. They spoke brazenly about how they arrived, why they left, and what they had been compelled to desert—properties, careers, households, and acquainted social buildings.

This fragile situation of immigrant existence, coupled with the resilience required to endure uncertainty and the braveness demanded by the choice to go away, grew to become central to the visible language of the collection. It is a state formed concurrently by vulnerability and willpower, by loss and by the continued labor of rebuilding life elsewhere.

YN: Many encounters started in nameless Telegram teams. How did working inside these digital areas, and thru a shared language, form your method to belief, visibility, and consent?

YS: You understand how “lost in translation” is a typical phrase that factors to the issue of conveying sure nuances of tone and that means. As I point out in my artist assertion, I {photograph} not Russians, however Russian-speaking individuals—together with Belarusians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, and others—intentionally emphasizing {that a} shared tradition (which will be loosely described as post-Soviet for readability) and a typical language instantly create a degree of belief and intimacy. This emerges by way of jokes, informal conversations, and on a regular basis expressions that solely make sense inside a shared historic and cultural context—one thing individuals from post-Soviet areas perceive virtually instinctively.

In my view, the hostility imposed on us, and particularly the warfare—which is certainly inhumane and a collective tragedy—doesn’t erase the sense of closeness amongst individuals now scattered throughout completely different continents. Many of those people protested in opposition to their very own totalitarian regimes or in opposition to corrupt, oligarchic methods of energy. Despite completely different nationwide backgrounds, they acknowledge how related their experiences are—of their displacement, of their seek for methods to outlive, and of their refusal to just accept inhumane situations, the equipment of propaganda, and poverty.

I discover it important to emphasise this unity amongst individuals who, for various factual causes however by way of essentially related circumstances, had the braveness to go away and start once more someplace on unfamiliar floor.

YN: Did you end up photographing moments of gathering greater than solitude, or did isolation develop into equally essential to the narrative?

YS: I initially started this challenge principally with single-person portraits, as they had been a lot simpler to rearrange logistically. Over time, as I grew to become immersed on this communal lifestyle and was progressively accepted into completely different circles, I shifted towards photographing gatherings of individuals, or people located inside group settings. It takes time for individuals to really feel snug with somebody transferring amongst them with a digicam, however as soon as that ease is established, conditions open up and emotional exchanges emerge organically. The vary of interactions turns into remarkably wealthy and unpredictable.

When individuals share lived expertise, sure cultural gestures—akin to males embracing each other—carry that means on their very own, with out the necessity for course or heavy staging. At the identical time, I proceed to maneuver forwards and backwards between these two distinct modes of illustration: the intimate single portrait and the collective scene. They complement each other and set up a rhythm inside the collection, inviting the viewer into areas and moments that may in any other case stay inaccessible.

 

YN: The work addresses the need “to be seen” whereas additionally questioning assimilation. How do you negotiate visibility with out reinforcing expectations positioned on immigrant our bodies?

YS: When preliminary belief is established, I intentionally collaborate with individuals across the diploma to which they want to be seen. We communicate brazenly about whether or not they have considerations about facial recognition within the pictures or in the event that they really feel snug being totally revealed. I supply a broad immediate, asking how they want to be perceived, what actions they think about, or how they envision their posture and presence. There is at all times a component of unpredictability in these responses. I’m significantly concerned about studying about their hobbies, as somebody who could initially seem reserved typically reveals sudden features of their life—dancing each Thursday, practising judo, or participating in different actions that reshape how they inhabit the body. This collaborative course of incessantly leads to probably the most shocking and, to me, probably the most compelling images.

Another realization emerged once I started positioning myself inside the teams I used to be photographing—particularly throughout my time in Florida. As individuals grew accustomed to my presence, they progressively stopped acknowledging the digicam, even once I used flash at evening. Conversations continued, interactions unfolded naturally, and I used to be capable of transfer freely by way of the area. This collective ease produced scenes through which the flash reworked on a regular basis actuality into one thing virtually theatrical. The mild constructs a visible environment that departs from the literal second whereas nonetheless preserving the company of these depicted. This expertise has more and more drawn me towards photographing gatherings.

 

YN: By photographing Russian-speaking communities in Massachusetts and Florida, you introduce distinct social and geographic contexts. How did these variations form the work, and do you assume the challenge’s message would shift if it had been made in a distinct nation?

YS: Do you bear in mind after we as soon as went collectively to Alexander Nizlobin’s stand-up present in Boston, and considered one of his jokes was that again house you select your pals, however in emigration you develop into buddies with whoever occurs to be round? I really feel that this remark relates carefully to the challenge. When I {photograph} Russian-speaking individuals, it appears to me that the group I encounter—whether or not within the United States or what I see on-line in Europe and Asia—is sort of related. Of course, if I had been photographing in different states or nations, issues would possibly look considerably completely different, however I work with the individuals out there to me, and I imagine they characterize the immigrant group now scattered throughout completely different continents.

Many of the individuals who seem within the images have moved incessantly, lived in numerous states, and proceed to relocate; their present place of residence is just not one thing fastened or everlasting, however relatively one stage inside a nomadic life-style through which they continuously navigate the place to stay and what to do subsequent.

After 2022, there are particular defining traits that unite us. We had been compelled to go away a rustic the place we had properties, jobs, buddies, dad and mom, faculties for our youngsters, and the whole lot else that structured our lives. Because of political disagreement, we needed to abandon all of that, transfer elsewhere, and begin once more from scratch. In this sense, I hope the individuals I {photograph} characterize a brand new wave of Russian emigration that has unfolded on a very giant scale following the warfare in Ukraine and the tightening of the political regime.

 

YN: You reference the Philosophers’ Ship of 1922. How does that historical past of exile inform your understanding of latest displacement, and do you see “Wayward Son” as documenting a selected second or an extended continuum of migration?

YS: When I reference the Philosophers’ Ship of 1922, I’m talking about my sense of grief over the repetition of repression and worry skilled throughout the Soviet interval. After the collapse of the united states, there was a widespread feeling that the nation was transferring towards democracy—towards political freedom, freedom of speech, and financial progress. In the 2000s, once I participated in protests with Alexei Navalny, who has since died (or, as I imagine, was killed), it appeared that this course was doable. Over time, nonetheless, that trajectory collapsed again right into a totalitarian system the place dissent is not tolerated.

This return to authoritarianism feels deeply acquainted to anybody who studied Russian historical past or heard tales from older generations. The repetition of repression forcing out those that assume critically and creatively is what makes the parallel with 1922 so painful. Once once more, the nation is expelling its mental and cultural communities.

This grew to become particularly private for me as a result of earlier than leaving Russia I labored as a photograph editor at one of many largest media corporations within the nation. In 2022, it grew to become not possible to report the information with out dealing with hazard from authorities whereas additionally being accused overseas of complicity with the regime. Many of my colleagues and buddies left. I lived within the heart of Moscow, in a liberal neighborhood surrounded by educated, engaged individuals. When all of them disappeared, the town I knew disappeared with them.

 

YN: Because your artist assertion ends with doubt relatively than decision, what questions stay unresolved for you, and has engaged on “Wayward Son” modified the way you perceive your individual relationship to position, belonging, or adaptation?

YS: In the current geopolitical local weather—marked by shifting visa regimes and the volatility governing mobility—the longer term typically seems much less as a horizon than as a contingency. That situation frames each my very own life and people of the individuals I {photograph} for the “Wayward Son” collection. The challenge doesn’t merely doc people; it registers a historic environment through which belonging is provisional.

What the work has clarified for me is that place not features as a steady basis for these dwelling by way of repeated relocation. Apartments, cities, and nations develop into short-term platforms relatively than anchors. What sustains individuals as an alternative is group—the flexibility to rebuild connection and belonging wherever they arrive. This shared situation turns into a supply of collective endurance.

We could also be unsure concerning the future, however we all know we’ve got the resilience to face challenges and to determine what comes subsequent, even when it stays an open query.

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Yana Nosenko is a multidisciplinary artist and curator whose work explores themes of immigration, displacement, nomadism, and familial separation — drawing from her personal experiences and expressed primarily by way of lens-based media.

She has exhibited on the International Center of Photography Museum, Gala Art Center, MassArt x SoWa, and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery. In 2023, she was awarded a residency at The Studios at MASS MoCA. That similar 12 months, she joined the Griffin Museum of Photography as a Curatorial Associate and Exhibition Designer, the place she helped co-curate and manage exhibitions, oversaw each day operations, facilitated artist talks and panels, designed advertising supplies, and labored carefully with guests and artists. In 2025, Yana was appointed Director of Education and Programming on the Griffin Museum, the place she continues to foster creative dialogue and studying by way of exhibitions, public applications, and group engagement.

Before specializing in images, Yana studied graphic design on the Stroganov Moscow Academy of Design and Applied Arts and labored as a graphic designer at Strelka KB, an city planning agency in Moscow. In 2017, she accomplished a significant impartial challenge: the design of Mayak, a typeface impressed by Soviet Constructivist fonts of the Nineteen Twenties–30s, later launched by ParaType.

She holds an MFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a certificates from the International Center of Photography.