VODYANITSA
Water shapes human life not only externally, through rivers and infrastructure, but also from within: through memory, loss, vulnerability, and the capacity to transform.
We are accustomed to viewing water as a resource, yet we rarely acknowledge it as a core component of human identity.
"Vodyanitsa" explores this internal dimension.
The project is rooted in the image of the Vodyanitsa from Slavic mythology. Unlike other mythical sirens, the Vodyanitsa is a "baptized drownress" — a figure of tragic fate rather than malice. For me, this image serves not as a folkloric detail, but as a vessel for a specific state of being: silence, memory, and the quiet resilience of feminine sensitivity.
Through the prism of the Vodyanitsa, I address gender, identity, and emotional experiences that seldom become subjects of documentary photography. She embodies fluidity and fragility as a form of strength, turning water into a metaphor for the human interior.
In this project, water is stripped of its conventional forms. There are no rivers or lakes here. Instead, I turn to its intimate, almost invisible presence: light refracting in a glass, shadows on a tabletop, a drop on paper, distortions within a lens. Captured entirely within enclosed spaces, these images focus on the essential: water as a sensation, a memory, and a state of mind.
Created in collaboration with poet Tate Ash, the project forms a unified space where visual imagery and poetic text breathe together. In its complete form, "Vodyanitsa" exists as a photobook — a narrative of internal transformation, purification, and the ability to regrow the water within oneself.
It is a gaze directed at the softness that becomes endurance. A landscape where light and shadow participate in the formation of identity as much as the external world.