In an old photo from a family album, I am in a striped sweater with a cat in my arms and out of focus. The Focus is behind me — on the calendar with peacocks and flowers (1995 — 1996). So I am about nine years old, and the photo was taken during the summer school holidays in the village of Kinelahta.
         I hardly remember anything from that time, only a few things: a red horse on wheels, how it neighs when you pull the rope; plastic palm trees with bananas and monkeys; a dried pike head — my grandfather’s fishing trophy. I remember how my father and I went fishing on the lake and how I walked home in boots full of water. I remember the smell of the forest I was walking through and the blueberry lips at the end of the walk.
       When the war started I decided to go to Kinelahta again. I wanted to escape from what was happening, to flee from the crowds, I wanted to get lost in the memories of my carefree childhood. Now, as a father, I went to the countryside with my ten-year-old son. I photographed how we spent time together, our distant relatives, places and objects that used to be important to me and the changes that happened to them.
        In his book The Story of a German (Historia de un alemán), Sebastian Haffner wrote that between 1934 and 1938 a lot of sentimental literature was being published: “There were books full of sheep bells, wildflowers, happy kids' summer holidays, first love, the smell of fairy tales, baked apples and Christmas trees. Such literature of excessive intrusive cordiality and timelessness poured onto the shelves of bookstores in the midst of pogroms, marches, construction of defense factories and concentration camps”. I am in Russia now so I can’t help but feel affinity with those authors. When the future is saturated with anxiety, I find myself turning more and more to my serene past.