Nadia
Sablin

Years Like Water

ears Like Water is a project about life in rural Russia, its everyday realities and changes caused by seemingly distant events. For over a decade, I photographed the inhabitants of a small village, Alekhovshchina, documenting their chores and leisure, small enterpreneurial efforts sprouting atop rotting soviet infrastructure, and relationships that sustain everyone during difficult times. I followed families, as they fell in and out of abject poverty, children growing up and becoming parents themselves, elders struggling to get a grasp on current reality, addled by propaganda and fear.
I feel a deep connection to these villagers: I share their memories of a childhood spent on this land and in these woods. And at the same time, I am removed -- an observer tying together the story of a life I could have lived. Now, as Russia is once again becoming an opaque entity to our Western understanding, I see this project as a document of a finished era. The book, published in 2022 by Dewi Lewis, is about a home to which I can never return.