Kristina Sergeeva
Everything Went Dark
12 January - 18 January 2023


When I was a child, I used to come to the village for the whole summer. The village was a center of carelessness, sincerity and love; uniting with nature and its mysteries. But as I grew up, my priorities changed. Everything had drifted away from my memory, covered with dust, and all that remained was the belief that fate would bring me back to this place again.

I returned years later with a desire to seize the time, to take a step back. I thought I would come to a place of former strength and security, so firmly rooted in my memory. But I came to a place of despair and emptiness.

Something was wrong. The fields around were overgrown with corroded hogweed. The villages nearby were slowly fused to the ground. I was struck by our house. There was a smell of damp, mildew inside, cobwebs all over the hallway, a hole in the roof. It was unpleasant to be there. The neighbors were telling the same stories with a wistful voice. I wanted to leave.

A dark cloud covered everything that had once illuminated.

The past never came back.

In this project I wanted to illustrate my unjustified hopes, to convey images of a slipped away childhood, faith, feelings of loss and emptiness. It is human nature to strengthen one’s love for the past, to idealize and embellish. Memories are a space of fantasy and faith, without which it is scary to be alone. Memories are a foundation that can crumble at any moment.

Kristina Sergeeva (b. 1996, St. Petersburg, Russia) is a photographer currently based in Shymkent, Kazakhstan.

She graduated from the Academy of Art and Documentary Photography Fotografika in 2019. Her artistic practice unfolds around experimental photography techniques, photobooks and collages. Her research addresses topics such as personal and collective memory, visual perception of the environment and its impact on the individual. Kristina is the founder and organizer of NIZINA FEST, works and teaches at the Fotografika Academy.