We are pleased to share details of two series: “Lozhok” and “Sketches from Home” by photographer Nick Tarasov.

Lozhok, 2019.

Lozhok is a place in the Siberian region, located 60km from Novosibirsk – the city where I was born.

From 1929 to 1956, there was the camp with particularly strict regime OLP-4 – one of the most terrible points of the Gulag system. Over 27 years of the camp’s working, more than 30 thousand people died in this place.

After the closure of the camp, the barracks in which the prisoners lived were destroyed. In their place in the 70s, the Palace of Culture, sports stadium, and a school were built. Underground sources filled one of the quarries, making it a lake. At its bottom there are still tractors and other equipment of that time. Another quarry is overgrown by vegetation.

When I came here for the first time, I immediately felt the strong energy of this place. It was as if I went inside Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”, in the world after the catastrophe. Despite the attempts of time and people to disguise the traces of those terrible events – this place definitely remembers everything.

I am interested in revealing the narratives contained within the local landscapes. The land here reveals itself as being both an agent of change and the field of human endeavour.

Sketches from Home, 2017-2019.

I returned home after a long absence, but again just for a short period of time. Siberia is a harsh and distinctive region in the center of Russia – this is where I am from.

Only when I was away from home, I began to think about the meaning of my origins and my own culture for me. Now many things, familiar from childhood, may seem amazing, bizarre, wild, strange or amusing to me, and I want to capture them, I am proud of them. They give me energy. I am looking for connections between these people, things, this place and this time.

Like sketches, singly, these photographs do not show a complete picture. They work like magnifiers showing only details.

To view more series, please follow Nick Tarasov on Instagram @nicktarasov where he will be taking over @reclaimphotographyfestival

Images © Nick Tarasov. All rights reserved.

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