[Carte Blanche Students] Discover the 20 finalists of the Carte Blanche Students 2022 ! Mother Land ""Mother Land" is a project about my mother, who had to escape the Russian-Ukrainian war and seek refugee in Berlin. It combines photographs, archival footage, text, and audio material.

 When I was a child, my mother sang Ukrainian folk songs to me every evening, just as many songs as many years I was, until I turned five. On the first day of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the thing I wanted the most was to hear my mother's lullaby, and holding back tears, she sang it to me via phone. 

I left Ukraine when I was 17 and from that moment I saw my mother rarely. On the 27th of February, she fled the war and came to me in Berlin by the evacuation train. War forced her to leave her life behind and start a new one in Europe. It also put us together in a small flat, where we have been living for a few months. 

 Experiencing unbearable pain, loss, hate, fear, but also love, pride, and hope brought us closer and led to personal transformations. The unexpected circumstances we found ourselves in made us go through the rapid transition from "parent-child" to "adult-adult" relations. The project "Mother Land" became a pure and honest expression of it. 

 This body of work is also a conviction of Russian aggression and death, suffering, and distraction it brought to Ukraine. Such an autobiographic macro-example of one family represents the realities of forced emigration caused by war and brings to attention millions of lives that were broken by imperialistic ideas, intolerance, and lust for power in Russia." Image from the series "Mother Land" by Anna/anya TSARUK Link in bio to discover the projects of the 20 finalists! - In partnership with @gares_connexions & @pictofr #parisphotofair #carteblanchestudents #carteblanche2021 #emergingphotography