cross-fade

Irina Ruppert, Julia Smirnova, Nikita Teryoshin

In the exhibition Überblendung (Eng.: cross-fade), observations on the upheavals in Eastern Europe merge with biographical inquiry. The three positions on view search for traces in the sites of the photographers’ childhoods. Born in the Soviet Union, they emigrated to Germany during different phases of their lives. For the series shown, they returned to the places they came from to compare their remembered images with today’s reality. The resulting works provide widely different perspectives on Eastern Europe.
While Irina Ruppert traces her memories in rural Eastern Europe, Julia Smirnova investigates the changes her native city Yaroslavl has undergone, confronting places she knew with newly emerged locations. Nikita Teryoshin returns to St Petersburg after eleven years’ absence to photographically subject the inner images of his childhood to outside reality.
The works shown navigate the fault line between familiarity and foreignness, personal identity and the state of society.