Alexandra
Shurun
"I closed my eyes as if immersed in water. I saw my room every moment more and more clearly, I was lying on the single sofa in my mother's apartment, in the room where I spent my entire childhood and youth, I was lying paralyzed with clarity of vision, there and here at the same time, I could see the smallest details of the wallpaper, touch them with my hands, feel the touch. A second later, I was already in the small kitchen, staring at the stove and the kettle, and at the old coffee pot with the bottom blackened with soot, at the curtains with a hole... Each element of the apartment gave birth to new and new others, I saw them all in front of me, sinking deeper and deeper.
A cassette tape recorder covered in dust, a table with traces of a cup, bookshelves, a carpet both old and new, everything was woven into the chain of my memories, sensations, presence.
HOME.
It stands alone, orphaned, empty, unnoticed, without us. It absorbed us, overgrown with us. Like with layers, wallpaper.
(From the diary, May 22, 2023)
H o m e
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 24, 2022, millions of Ukrainians have had to flee their homes and move to different cities, countries and continents searching for a safe place for them and their children.
Packing the bags while the bombs were falling there were often just seconds to decide what, besides documents, power banks and phone chargers, to take to the unknown future leaving their homes and whole lives behind.
Personal belongings, often impractical but so valuable, that people took with them as a memory, symbolize their displaced owners.
All photographs were taken in summer 2022 in Warstein, a small and quiet town in the north west of Germany, which became one of many temporary homes for Ukrainians.