Recognition

   This is a series of photos about my parents — elderly, retired people who lead their quiet life in our village house, where more than one generation of the family grew up. I've been spending a lot of time with them over the past few years, trying to help them with the household chores and just being around them more often. I see how time is taking its toll, how we are changing, growing up and getting older. It worries me and I want to make time for truly important things. In our family we're not used to express our emotions openly, to talk about love, to show intimacy. That's probably why my pictures could feel a bit detached. I try to take pictures of people unbeknownst to them, in secret, without their direct involvement in the shot itself. My parents are not aware of this series, but they are the main characters of it. 

   Sometimes I think about the fact that the things that surround us in everyday life can tell a story about a person just as good as their very portrait. Here's a shot of my father's habit of collecting and hoarding things as the evidence of a difficult childhood, the consequences of which he carries through his whole life. Here's a picture of what my mother's occupied with in her spare time. It has not become her profession but it is her passion and what she's exceled at: gardening. In summer the garden is flooded with the flowers she has grown. All those things their way of life consists of helped me to create this family portrait.

    My pictures are the evidence of a quiet, perhaps lukewarm, but not indifferent connection. I observe my parents, I observe myself, and I love it for eternity.