“Unbewitched is about the act of conjuring a fairytale reality around yourself – constructing myths and fleeing from fear and pain into a dream,” says Kristina Rozhkova, whose newest undertaking traces 5 years of life in Russia and what adopted after she left. Within Unbewitched, this fantasy is undercut by what she describes as “the breaking of the spell – a moment of disillusionment, the removal of the blindfold, a collision with reality.” Here, Rozhkova captures pals and acquaintances who, like her, are reckoning with the foundations of their new actuality.
The work attracts closely on themes of fantasy and dislocation, an aesthetic that the photographer says is critical to latch onto in response to up to date life. “The reality for young, creative people in Russia who dissent from the regime is bleak, if not outright dangerous,” she explains. “By shielding ourselves from these horrors, we invent new worlds.”
The draw to fantasy is one the photographer has felt lengthy earlier than she picked up a digital camera. Bullied all through faculty and labelled “strange”, Rozhkova retreated inward, first into literature, then philosophy, till finally discovering pictures as a medium to play with actuality. “Perhaps that was the turning point – turning toward fantasy to look away from human cruelty.”
In this fashion, most of the pictures are staged by the photographer herself. Subjects are proven coated in mud, contorted into unusual poses, or caught in embrace. In one picture, a physique disappears beneath clusters of translucent toad eggs. “The dressing up and role-playing during my shoots is an opportunity to adjust reality,” she displays, describing an strategy that searches for “strange poses, uncomfortable situations, and unexpected details.”
While this staging may simply be learn as theatrical, the emotional actuality beneath it stays grounded within the lives of younger Russians residing by way of political instability. Many of the individuals photographed all through the guide are Rozhkova’s pals and acquaintances. “The war with Ukraine and the relentless repressions against artists and the LGBTQ+ community in Russia forced many to abandon their homes, families, and jobs for a life in exile,” she explains. While some pals have disappeared solely into isolation, others seem in pictures taken in an deserted village the place they now stay off-grid, “fishing, gathering mushrooms, self-sustaining just to avoid returning to city life.”
Shortly earlier than the guide’s launch, Rozhkova fled the nation after spending two years underneath prison prosecution associated to her creative follow. Now residing outdoors Russia for the primary time, she describes an unfamiliar sense of reduction. “For the past two years, living under criminal prosecution, I was in a state of constant terror,” she says. “I’d walk down the street expecting to be snatched up again. Now, the clouds have cleared. My mind is sharper. There’s this unusual sense of freedom.”
This co-existence of discomfort threads all through the undertaking, a fixation that Rozhkova intentionally leans into. “I believe discomfort is essential in art,” she explains. “Society is obsessed with comfort and pleasure, but comfortable days are unremarkable.” Instead, she searches for pictures that sit between magnificence and grotesquery, pulling viewers in the direction of what would possibly initially repel them. “We are naturally drawn to the monstrous and the ‘dirty’. Ugliness becomes desirable.”
At occasions, this discomfort emerges by way of recurring motifs of animals throughout the undertaking. “Since birth, I communicated more with dogs than with people; my friends and toys were the dogs.” She continues: “The animal world has always been more compelling to me than the human one. I tend to explain humanity through animalistic lenses and vice versa. To me, modern society and civilisation are a dead end; I see nothing beautiful in it.”
While Unbewitched pulls from different worlds, there’s an anchor of realism that comes with its creation. “This book is a definitive point of no return,” she says. “It’s a record of a complex, destructive period. It’s a way to preserve what is already breaking, knowing life will never be the same. It’s an attempt to preserve what is slipping away – or what has already vanished.”
Unbewitched is revealed by United Vagabonds and obtainable to buy on-line here
