Khudoliy #3

Photo print, white border

5” x 7.5” (12.7cm x 19cm)
9” x 12” (22.9 cm x 30.5cm)
12” x 18” (30.5cm x 45.7cm)

"I took this photo for the book "Katenka" (or Runaway).

Desire diverges from reality like a runaway. Consciousness flees into the realm of the unreal – perhaps, that is the origin of the artistic impulse. At that moment, I wanted to capture this motion.

The photo was taken in October a few years ago. Nature dramatically faded before winter, revealing its most beautiful flowers. Back then, I had a particularly strong desire to shoot. My senses were sharpened: I tried to rely on my intuition and capture as many images as I could, not worrying about sorting them out.

A couple of days prior to the shooting, I was walking in the botanical garden and saw wilted mums. They seemed to form a nice contrast to a figure of a young woman. Some kind of gothic evanescence of youth.

Breezy sunny day. Looking over a bunch of photos I noticed a shadow on the reflector that the woman was holding. It suddenly occurred to me that the reflection of her figure on the screen did not at all convey her essence. Hidden in the dark, she was naively waving at us – alive yet incomprehensible. There was something philosophical about it. I smirk at my thought now: could it be Plato himself who pressed the shutter button?" – Vadim Khudoliy