TitleLight and Heavy

Entry descriptionOur view of life is very strongly connected with the place where we live and the place where we grew up. I have taken an average Russian city and a place of contrasts with everything standing opposite each other all the time. Life is hard and yet easy at the same time. In my thoughts I’m going back to this city of youth and strength, desires and moving forward. So this is the “lightness” of my dreams. In fact, the reality of that city as it was then for me is long gone. The idea that I can not go back means this city has a special place in my mind. It’s a place of lightness, almost soaring flight. Conversely, the likelihood that I may have to live there day after day, to repeat the same routine week in, week out, turns it into something heavy, horribly intrusive and chilling.

About the photographerEarly on Katerina Belkina (*1974) knew about her exceptional talent to see the world through different eyes. Born in Samara in the southeast of European Russia, she was brought up in an creative atmosphere by her mother, a visual artist. Her education at the Art Academy and the School for Photography of Michael Musorin in Samara gave her the tools to visualize her ideas. Exhibitions of her sublime, mystic self-portraits ensued in Moscow and Paris. Katerina Belkina was nominated for the prestigious Kandinsky Prize (comparable to the British Turner Prize) in Moscow in 2007. She won the International Lucas Cranach Award 2015 and the prestigious Hasselblad Masters Prize in 2016. Currently she lives and works in Werder (Havel).