OF TIME AND MEMORY Memories. Memories blur into dreams. Light brings them to truth. Everything unforgiving. Everything becoming hallow. Loneliness consumes and there is no way back. The places you played, the places you called home, the people you thought you loved, all of them, reduced to a memory of another life. A life you never lived. All the yesterdays that came from tomorrow, all the tomorrows that never came from yesterday. A new beginning because forever is never forever." Olafur Arnalds “Of time and memory” is a personal body of work. It is my attempt to refresh recollections from my childhood and to better understand the meaning and the power of an era that not only has shaped the life and being of my parents and grandparents but has also left its marks on me and those around me. Of time and memory is an ongoing project. It is a cultural study of how history has defined and determined post Soviet culture and how this culture has defined and determined society. These photographs explore the psychological and physical spaces of humans in a climate of disbelieve and lack on confidence. Among others, the project focuses on the influence of communism on ordinary people’s visual culture. Particularly interesting is the link between totalitarianism and kitsch, especially domestic kitsch. Back in Soviet times, kitsch was the most common and only affordable form of aesthetics. It is truly fascinating to observe how the zeitgeist of an epoch affects people’s perception of reality and dictates their decision of what to see as aesthetical and stylish and what to mark as visually unattractive. It is even more remarkable when the influence of a certain period of time is so dominant that development or form change might be perceived as annoying or even undesirable. Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Soviet Union. For the young generation of the former member countries this period of time could seem as long as eternity. But the harsh totalitarian regime of Bolshevism has dictated people’s life for a long, long time and has left its marks on every aspect of their being. It has changed their culture, their perceptions, their mentality and even their memories. As a result, a new form of human existence has emerged. Today, traces and consequences of this epoch are still vivid everywhere. And though, as it always happens in life, time heals all wounds. Step by step, even the harshest memories fade away. Forms and figures disappear to be replaced by new patterns and elements of contemporary life.