Elena Podobreevskaya. In a Word

• A small one-room apartment on Kronstadt Boulevard in Moscow. The lights are off, only a faint glow flickers in the dark. Alphaville and Depeche Mode play through the speakers of a Phillips double cassette player. Beside me — a Zenit film camera. Empty Kodak film canisters scattered around.

• I am fifteen years old.

• A red lamp, a Crocus enlarger, and small plastic trays on the table — developer and fixer. I take a 10×15 sheet and adjust the lens. Then I place the paper into the first tray — and a miracle begins: the image comes to life. First barely visible, then clearer and clearer. The important thing is to lift it with the tongs at just the right moment, without overexposing it in the developer. Then — into the fixer.

• And in the morning no one at home will be able to take a bath, because dozens of captured moments will be hanging on the bathroom walls and draped across the drying rack.

• That’s how photographs were born in my youth

• Later, the Zenit is replaced by a Canon, and then the iPhone appears — astonishing with the quality of its lenses — and ends up on the same shelf as that old Phillips cassette player, almost like one of its own. Each lens is an anthology, a library of moments, feelings, and emotions I was not ready to let go of. A library of fragments of beauty.

• I believe that beauty exists everywhere. Even where it seemingly cannot — or should not — be found. I think the purpose of art is to reveal it. To make a person pause in the rush of daily life and say: “Look! The world is made for you! Remember why you are here.”

• Beauty makes us purer, lifts us above the ordinary, gives us meaning. Behind every major event, behind every human impulse and motivation, stands beauty — the beauty of life, the beauty of a person, the beauty of someone’s soul. Beauty can destroy the world. And it can also restore it.

• And I want to show it to you. As I saw it, as I felt it, as I managed to stop time for a moment and keep it for myself. Everything I felt in that instant, everything I thought about — or everyone I thought of — and everything that surrounded me is present in each frame. Written with an invisible brush among the details and shapes, in the play of color and light across the canvas of the image.

I invite you to feel it.

Elena Podobreevskaya

Fire

The evening December sun, tangled in the branches of a forest near Moscow, glides across the window of a country house and settles comfortably among the silver snowflakes of the first winter patterns on the glass. On the table — hot tea; in the quiet rooms — the crackling of the fireplace; a warm blanket; and a loyal dog curled up at your feet.

Such a reality could lie behind this image. Or perhaps it could not.

The candles in a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka are also someone’s warmth and someone’s sun. And someone’s point of origin. Each of us has our own — we merely fill in reality with our sensations and judgments, giving it meaning and substance. We reflect in it like in a mirror, down to the final stroke and final word.

WATER AND SKY 

Two powerful elements — water and sky. Like two strong personalities, once placed side by side, they transform into a single entity with new meaning and new energy.

Rays of light, intertwining in the folds of waves and gliding among clouds, create intricate geometry and layer upon layer of imagery, drawing the eye to the lines that emerge by chance.

The lines of life shared by two elements.

Minimum of detail — only light and lines. The cracked, tangled branches of a tired tree. A sad, contemplative, overcast sun: nature is resting from bright flashes and giving itself time to wander calmly through the waves of memory, moving in the unhurried, cool rhythm of autumn.

And yet, within it still echoes the palette of a vanished summer, dissolved by nature into the essence of the present day. It echoes and breathes with hope — hope for its swift return.

HAPPINESS 

I step out of the Astoria building. The fresh St. Petersburg wind blows across my face. People are smiling. The city is many things — but always sincere. And free. And deeply creative.

And when you come here, you become that way too.

So do I. I look through the window of the candy shop “Schastye” next to the Astoria — and I don’t see the sweets. I see Andy Warhol. And hundreds of other artists who perceive the world in bright and unusual ways.

I see many different forms of happiness.
Instantly, I want to take it with me.

MULTITUDES 

Something slips away into the distance, carrying with it events and the memory of them. From the vast to the small — and now, at the edge of consciousness, there remains only a barely visible tiny point. A small, compressed point of emotions, feelings, words, and circumstances.

It will take its place among the multitude of others like it, and only occasionally will we retrieve it from memory and, by looking closely — recalling and filling it with our attention — restore the moments of the past and our sensations from them. Whether it is the World Cup, tears for someone, or simply drops of autumn rain.

FAITH 

Еach person has their own path to God. And their own path to themselves.

Until humanity learns to become a better version of itself,  to live in peace and harmony,  God will continue to teach us. He will adjust our character through illness, heal our souls through circumstances and through the actions of others. Heal and chastise, loving us and sacrificing Himself for us.

God is everywhere — and first of all within us. We only need to hear Him. And listen to Him, very, very attentively. And see Him in Beauty. Because it was He who created it. And it seems to me that through beauty He speaks to us most clearly and most understandably.