Key to a Swiss Atelier

 

Statement

Рус / ENG

I was born in a city that is not present in the map…

No, this is not a village and not even a town, but a capital of the hugest and the richest Siberian region called Krasnoyarsk. This is a big city with population of one-million people, with high buildings, wide streets and noisy overcrowded roads. However, the school textbook manufacturers, perhaps, were not aware of this fact. As it is now I remember how much I was shocked at the very first geography class in my life, when during a break I opened the school atlas in order to find my city in the map… It wasn’t present there…

I was born in a little family were an aimless existence was accepted as a life style.

No, my parents are not bad. On the contrary, they are very nice, beautiful and cheerful people. But the only thing they could teach me was going to a useless unloved work, and then complaining about poor health, stupid bosses and low salaries. Their programme for me was getting higher education, not important what kind of education but this was obligatory. As a result, I have two diplomas in the profession totally unnecessary for me. And my abilities for drawing and music that were always ignored by my parents remained undeveloped.

For all my conscious life I have been suffocating. How can one suffocate having such spaces all around?

I am suffocating with the tightness of an apartment that I live in, with the huge quantity of energy that I don’t know how to use, with inability to realize what I really want, with my wishes that have a habit of not coming true, with different other things.

At school after the first learned English phrases I knew that I would leave my home city, at least, for a while.

Here I am in a Swiss town called Neuchâtel that is a direct opposite of my homeland. At first sight everything is so little, almost toy here. This town seems to be easily gone around by bicycle for a few hours. But I am strolling about the narrow streets with a smile on my face for many hours and I am surprised by the passersby who every time smile at me in reply. Smiles are rare guests on the faces of Krasnoyarsk citizens, that is why I am so astonished at this fact. And although people speak the language that is unfamiliar to me I seem to understand them. It is so easy to breathe here and I feel totally free…

My friend that invited me to Switzerland and organized the first in my creative life solo-exhibition gives me a key to his atelier for I can take pictures there any time I want. How huge it is, how spacious! For me who is used to create in five square metres it seems to be unbelievably big. I have never ever been alone in the room of that size! And I start to shoot, and I am shooting myself… by force of habit, probably. I realize that I am deliriously happy and I cannot understand according to what merits of mine I got all these.

My series tells about many things. It is about a human being who tries to break away from the fixed routine of a daily life. It is about a girl from an uncreative environment whose desires are not understood by her habitual society. About a young poor photographer who for a short while and absolutely free was given a chance to work in good conditions. And also about an unrestrained wish of a young soul to see the world and find its own place in it.

 

 

Pierre-William Henry’s Studio

Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 2008

 

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