Photography

Welcome to my photography portfolio. My artist statement and a selection of current work is available below.

Artist Statement

I grew up in Ukraine, a soulful nation presently fighting for its very survival. I am a researcher who studies climate change. Now and again I wake up with the shakes. Once I hurled a washing machine into a scrap heap at a landfill. I was ashamed. I love the ocean. Sometimes, when I’m out in the waves alone at dawn, I sing gibberish and talk dirty with harbor seals. I have three young children. They mean the world to me. What are we doing to the planet? Why do we take part in producing ourselves so unsustainably? How can we make a home and find peace in our selves and in a world that is undergoing such rapid transformation?

My work begins from the standpoint that we have a vexed relationship to the natural world, a complicated relationship to technology, and deeply alienated relationships with others and with our own bodies. My photography represents aspects of these tensions. An environmental sociologist by profession, my art subtly weaves together a scientific view of environmental problems, a relational perspective on human life, and a portraiture fit for the Anthropocene in which body, culture and nature fuse together in coherent but problematic wholes.

My current project, Adrift/Ashore/Aground, explores these threads in the context of the Russian River watershed in Northern California, a place marked by a history of colonial exploitation and extraction, ongoing ecological change, and an uncertain future. In particular, the project deals with themes of human-nonhuman form, time and aging, and grief.

Click on the images below to view individual collections that are part of the Adrift/Ashore/Aground project. If you'd like to learn more or be a part of a shoot for this project, please contact me.