NINA PROKOFIEVA
Gallery/Series/Contacts







WONDERLAND



Wonderland is all about the very special and precious relationship I enjoy with my sister. Maria is twelve years my junior. I greatly value and indeed cherish the close bond that the two of us share. Sadly, after I left my country to take up international studies, I became painfully aware of the growing distance that now separates us. In this photo series, I am telling the story of this widening gap. My sister always struck me as a unique and complex character, someone who lives in a world of her own. When sifting through my photo archives, including photos of Maria, I realised with great sorrow the heavy toll my studies abroad and hectic travel schedule are taking on my relations with Masha.

I suddenly became acutely aware of how fast she was growing and how much she was changing. Now every time we reunite after a long separation, it feels like meeting a new person. It is a source of much soul-searching and melancholy, but also of ever-growing interest in her as a person, as well as the unique world she inhabits. So I decided that seeing this was worth recording. 
Photographs help me overcome my sorrow: it’s almost as though, for a instant, I manage to stop the ruthless progress of time, or even challenge the laws of physics by momentarily tearing up life’s rule book.In the Wonderland series, we are watching one person across time. It is the same human being, yet every time new, changing and unknown. On some of the shots, it’s not even clear whether this is she or someone else: the multiple exposure shot is an expression of my own ambivalent feelings about my sister, a rendering of the sensation which I experience when I am around her. 

This work is about my desire to merge the images of Masha with my own recollections of her, surreptitiously to watch her live in her fragile world. At times, she is far away, while at others she is staring right at me. Wonderland is my non-verbal dialogue with my sister, an attempt to take a look at her and find a common language both of us can understand.
 Wonderland is all about the very special and precious relationship I enjoy with my sister. Maria is twelve years my junior. I greatly value and indeed cherish the close bond that the two of us share. Sadly, after I left my country to take up international studies, I became painfully aware of the growing distance that now separates us. In this photo series, I am telling the story of this widening gap. My sister always struck me as a unique and complex character, someone who lives in a world of her own. 
When sifting through my photo archives, including photos of Maria, I realised with great sorrow the heavy toll my studies abroad and hectic travel schedule are taking on 
my relations with Masha. 

I suddenly became acutely aware of how fast she was growing and how much she was changing. Now every time we reunite after a long separation, it feels like meeting 
a new person. It is a source of much soul-searching 
and melancholy, but also of ever-growing interest in her 
as a person, as well as the unique world she inhabits. So I decided that seeing this was worth recording. 
Photographs help me overcome my sorrow: it’s almost 
as though, for a instant, I manage to stop the ruthless progress of time, or even challenge the laws of physics 
by momentarily tearing up life’s rule book.In the Wonderland series, we are watching one person across time. It is the same human being, yet every time new, changing and unknown. On some of the shots, it’s not even clear whether this is she or someone else: 
the multiple exposure shot is an expression of my own ambivalent feelings about my sister, a rendering of the sensation which I experience when I am around her. 

This work is about my desire to merge the images 
of Masha with my own recollections of her, surreptitiously to watch her live in her fragile world. At times, she is far away, while at others she is staring right at me. Wonderland is my non-verbal dialogue with my sister, 
an attempt to take a look at her and find a common language both of us can understand.