«The girl in front of the lake»
fully handmade artist edition of 35 copies
20x26 cm
168 pages
handbound
hardcover
2 types of paper

In Tokyo ORDERS AVAILABLE VIA Reminders Photography Stronghold, in Russia email me at eholkina@gmail.com

This is a visual fable built from three types of photographic imagery. The basis of the project is the idea of cyclic historical processes and how common social issues manifest through a personal private story. In the book the author's childhood from the vague and anxious 1980-90s is turned into a fairy tale through family archive slides taken by her parents and coexists with her own photographic diary of the present that tastes and smells a lot like back in the 1980-90s. Slicing through the colorful narrative come dark disquieting artworks Lena makes as a visual artist. In terms of the book design the inspiration came from Tarkovsky’s colour palette and the cinematic way of narration, as well as by Victor Pelevin's (Russian contemporary writer) image of a train, which is interpreted in the layout via separating images in half and putting them close to page edges, to mimic the way one sees the world from a moving train.

Artist Statement

The book part of Garage MCA library collection

The book dummy was shortlisted in Moscow Photobookfest 2017 and was exhibited at Pennlab gallery (Moscow, 2023), the 10th Anniversary Edition of Month of Photography (Los Angeles, 2018), «Familienarchiv» exhibition (Baden, Austria, 2018), Moscow Photobookfest (The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography Moscow, 2017), «Private relapse» exhibition (NCCA Moscow, 2017), Uglich Photoparade, 2017. It also became 2nd in the People’s Choice at the recent Bookmarket (Sakharov Center Gallery, November 2018) and 3rd in the Expert Choice of the Best Russian Photobooks 2018.