2013
Chamotte, porcelain, photo decal
60 × 250 × 4 cm.
The old woman grieved on her deathbed saying farewell to life. At some point, in her depressed state, a moment came when her face brightened and, looking at her daughter, she said: “And now I see, it’s me standing there!” This woman had been blessed, at the moment of her transition to another world to see the proof of her immortality.
This project is dedicated to the good half of humanity, while the author does not believe that the other half is evil. We are talking about the feminine, that is, about those human beings who always carried the main service in the matter of procreation and being guardians of the hearth. The assertion of equal woman rights often resulted in a multiplication of her duties. And if the male half were herded in the army or labor for the promised common good and better future, women continued to work for the tangible benefit of the “here and now” people.
Here are the photographs of several generations of the family that genuinely embody the continuity of the female mission in human society. It just so happened that these mothers had been giving birth only to daughters, and even so looking alike to them that each, seeing her child, could say: “And now I see, it’s me standing there!”
The author is deeply grateful to Anna Leonidovna Udaltsova for providing photographs from her family archive.