Dom
Dom
Master's Thesis
- MPhD 23
Dom stands for “home” and “house” in Russian.
This topic has always been sensitive in my family. My great-grandfather’s home was destroyed twice during dekulakization — the Soviet campaign of political repression.
After I was born, my mom and I were forced to move twice, in 2000 and 2019, for safety reasons. I left my country in 2022 after its government started the war against Ukraine and have not returned since.
The project explores different edges of feeling at home, losing home, and trying to find one. During my first two years of immigration, I had long conversations with my friends and neighbors from Russia and Ukraine, most of whom left their countries after the start of the war.
I photographed them in their current apartments abroad alongside objects that help create an ephemeral sense of home. In the end, these objects became only a thread, a starting point for untangling something deeper and far more complex.
Dom does not seek to compare the stories but to delve into the multiple dimensions of home and the questions that have followed me since childhood and have now become even more crucial.
Recently, I added another layer to the project. As a safety measure, I began covering my subjects’ faces with threads. They function both as protection and as a visual metaphor. There is an expression “to sew someone’s mouth shut,” meaning to silence a person. This echoes the fragile boundary between protection, self-censorship, and vulnerability.
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