If you look at one point for a long time without looking away, you can see the most familiar objects in a way that you’ve never seen them before. Since childhood, I have unconsciously absorbed my great-grandmother's still lives hanging on every wall of our family dacha house and city apartment in St Petersburg – it's surprising that later I myself intuitively came to still life in photography.

I feel the connection and closeness of the generations of my family conveying to each other the essence of the place through traditions, objects, conversations and everything that has invariably filled and continues to fill the space of these houses.

Here are collected things that were used long before me, appearing here and there in photographs in the family photo albums and in dad's stories about his childhood. Some of these items can also be seen on my great-grandmother's still lives hanging on the walls. Each object is filled with history, and together they form a sense of something in common and transmit the essence of the space that they fill. And the space in its turn carefully forms people living in it.

Coffeepots and teapots, vases and small figurines, old clothes and more. All these objects are filled with the elegance of forms, the beauty of lines, the subtlety of reflections, and the variety of shades. Although my grandmother is gone a long time ago, all her costumes and outfits are still hang in her room on the second floor in the closet with blue curtains. Many of them were already worn out, and some were even worn by my great-grandmother and her sister. But for me, they contain not only the memory of my grandmother and love to her, but I also see beauty in them. This beauty was created long before my birth and then during all my life was invisibly present around everything that I did. Using all this to create still lives I strive to convey a sense of the integrity of this house and not break even the smallest connections so long and carefully built by its inhabitants.

This project is a sensual exploration of myself, immersion in the world where there’s nothing superfluous or unfamiliar, but at the same time it is a world fraught with the unknown and, perhaps, even with something I‘ve never seen there myself. The space that I without a doubt will call my own home and which is so difficult to put into words.