Image created through multiple reflections.

Born to a working-class family, in geopolitical circumstances which controlled and limited the circulation of print, I was starved for books. After I started going to school and discovered public libraries, the world of stories became my reality, in many ways more real than everyday life. I perused my interest in literature by earning an MA in Comparative Literature, followed by a PhD in Humanities, and starting my academic career in that field.
While studying literature, I noticed that all my favorite writers had something in common – Updike, Nabokov, Brodsky were all amateur photographers and so was I. This observation made me wonder to what degree looking at the world through the camera affected someone’s way of seeing.
Soon after receiving my PhD I presented a paper at a major national conference. It was dedicated to a poem by Joseph Brodsky, which I analyzed as an example of a photographic ekphrasis. The poem was written in Russian and left untitled by the author. My analysis was based mostly on the conviction that I knew “that way of seeing” – for me the poem “worked” like a photographic image. A year later I found this poem translated by the poet himself into English. He titled it A Photograph. By then I knew I was a photographer.
After I moved to the U.S. seventeen years ago, I have dedicated most of my time to photography; I studied at the International Center of Photography and at Penumbra Foundation in New York City. Since then, I have been photographing street scenes, which are a visual testimony to the existence of magical realism in our everyday life. I also combined my interests in photography, mythology, and world literature in a written project – a book dedicated to the portrayal of the photographer in world literature, whom I interpret as an incarnation of the archetypal trickster.