The first month of the war was surreal. To walk through the idyllic parks and downtown streets and see happy families playing with their children, couples enjoying picnics in the sun, while our families, and thousands like them, were sitting in the basement with no water and light, trying to ignore the sounds of missiles hitting other houses nearby. None of it felt real - we were feeling like a prop in a movie, detached from reality, not fitting into either of the two worlds.
My name is Aliona Kuznetsova and I am a photographer. I believe that my art is a mashup of everything I saw, felt, thought, and experienced. More than this: through all my life – four countries I lived in, dozens of cities I traveled to, a mood disorder I am battling, meeting and parting with my closest friends – my art has been a silver lining that helped me day by day to refine the understanding of who I really am.
