Empty Spaces


  • Photographer
    Katerina Belkina
  • Prize
    1st Place / People/Self-Portrait, 1st Place / Fine Art/Collage, 1st Place / Fine Art/Portrait, 1st Place / Special/Digitally Enhanced
  • Company/Studios
    Katerina Belkina
  • Date of Photograph
    2010-2011
  • Technical Info
    photo&Ph

Big city like something as independent, living and nonliving at the same time, like artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, it is void if it’s without people. Sometimes we feel the same emptiness inside. We want to fill it but we fill the empty spaces outside: apartments, houses, cars, districts. We find all our accomplishments are an illusion, and material goods – imaginary. Lonely heroes who have found refuge in safe and comfortable surroundings in the middle of paranoiac anxiety of urban landscapes, are in the paradoxical position of concentrated despair. It is this feeling that comes to the people in a contemporary city.

Story

We can see a blatant literal interior. It is cautious in its dialogue with the unique environment outside. But the evidence is not plotless. Heroes who are placed in specific spaces are revealing unexpected drama of the conflict.
Lonely heroes who have found refuge in safe and comfortable surroundings in the middle of paranoiac anxiety of urban landscapes, are in the paradoxical position of concentrated despair. It is this feeling that comes to the people in a contemporary city. Heroes of the portraits look closely at confused viewers at one moment and turn desolately away at the next.
It is neither escape, nor disguise, but the search for one’s own place in an open, empty and alien environment of a city.

When I was a child I saw the same dream over and over.
I'm looking for my house, but I can’t find it. All the houses look alike. So I’m thinking that this search can last forever. And I’m afraid. Nobody is around. Only the emptiness. I’m alone.
When you live in a big city you are often thinking that this place isn’t yours. We’re looking for some place which we can call – home, my home.
In the process the new type of person is being formed.
The person who loves and hates the city at the same time.
I see the city as something independent, living and nonliving at the same time, like artificial intelligence. It attracts, fascinates. Besides, it is void, if it’s without people.
Sometimes we feel the same emptiness inside. We want to fill it, but we are wrong, and we fill the empty spaces outside. We fill apartments, houses, cars, neighborhoods, cities and so on. And we begin to understand, that all our accomplishments are an illusion, and material goods – imaginary. We feel very lonely ourselves. And just then we start to think that we are in the wrong place. At the same time a question appears: “Why do I live”.
So it's a positive thing, because at this moment comes the spiritual growth.
What happens inside each work is a conversation of a human and the city. Windows in my work symbolize illusion of communication.

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