I remember it. I was very young, yet that night has remained in my memory: a stormy, dark night in our old house by the Vilyuy River, where matches were produced during the war. Behind the darkened window, lightning flashed endlessly in a frightening dance. Cold, driving rain beat against the panes. My mother and my aunt Mira, overwhelmed by the fear that seized us in the middle of the night, took me and my sister in their arms and carried us down into our small cellar. The desire to escape that unbearable uproar awakened a strange feeling, at once magical and filled with shivers, in the face of the unleashed elements. And only the golden onion in my mother’s stocking seemed to look at me, to smile and to glow. There was neither anger nor resentment that my mother would not let me sleep on that wonderful night. I was one and a half years old…

    Five years old. Summer. I am standing in a basin of water. My grandmother is scrubbing my back with a rough flannel, with all her strength. The pain is sharp, the touch harsh, cold and unpleasant. I tell myself that I do not like spending the summer at my grandmother’s in the countryside at all. After this “bath”, my sister and I go out into the village’s only street and, without saying anything to my grandmother, we go to stay with relatives. We remain there for the whole summer. I still do not understand why my grandmother did not come to look for us… And that is the only memory I have of her…

    Seven years old. My mother and father have apparently not lived together for a long time. My sister and I walk one behind the other along a narrow alley. Around the bend stands a small hut, where my father lives… Today, mother has allowed us to spend the night with him. The three of us lie on a wooden bed, I pressed against the wall… I like lying against the wall, where my father’s pocket watches are hanging… They tick… They are beautiful. My father tells us an astonishingly tender story that he has invented for us, about a huge elk on whose antlers lived two little girls… I almost believe those girls are my sister and me. A few days later, when we return to my father’s place, we will find only a burnt skeleton where the hut once stood. I begin to rummage through the heap of charred debris, trying to find those famous pocket watches… my father’s beautiful watches… I must already have known then that I would not see my father again for a long time…

    This photographic tale speaks of memory, of the brightest recollections of every human being, of what is precious, warm, authentic and sincere, of what cannot be influenced, transformed or destroyed. Memory is what belongs to us, what no one can take away. It is the most intimate recess of our soul, where we often hide from the world. This story is based on my own childhood memories, on my loved ones, on places, smells and sensations that grew stronger after my departure from Yakutia. It speaks of what we carry within us. This memory, these memories, dwell deep inside us.