Ready To Fly, 2026 (from POLATAVALAND: Her Waking Dreams)

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POLTAVALAND: Her Waking Dreams (Ukraine, 2026)

“POLTAVALAND: Her Waking Dreams” is the third project in the series of projects exploring Poltava—a place that exists for me as both a physical reality and an inner landscape. My connection to it is deeply personal: my maternal grandmother was born there, and although I have only ever visited, I have always felt a strong, almost inexplicable bond with this place. My grandmother passed away 22 years ago, yet she continues to appear in my dreams, and in many ways this project becomes a quiet tribute to her presence—both remembered and imagined.

If the previous works - POLTAVALAND: Ukraine’s Place of Power (2019-2021) and POLTAVALAND: Life At The Backdrop (2025-2026) - traced Poltava’s spiritual essence and the persistence of life during wartime, this series turns inward, focusing on the psychological and emotional terrain of Poltavian women. Here, Poltava itself emerges as a feminine presence—sensitive, enduring, and marked by both resilience and vulnerability. The city and its landscapes begin to mirror the inner worlds of the women who inhabit it.

Photographed against the ongoing backdrop of war, this project is dedicated to women living in states of waiting, loss, and uncertainty. Many are suspended between absence and hope—waiting for loved ones to return, or learning to live with their loss. In this fragile space, reality becomes porous, shaped as much by memory and longing as by the present moment.

The work is grounded in real, documented encounters, yet infused with a subtle surrealism that reflects the nature of Poltava as I perceive it. Moments drift between reality and dream, where gestures and landscapes take on symbolic weight. War is not shown directly, but felt as a psychological presence—an undercurrent shaping emotion, time, and perception.

“POLTAVALAND: Her Waking Dreams” is a meditation on paradox: hope and grief, strength and vulnerability, presence, and absence. It reflects a state in which dreaming becomes inseparable from living. Through these images, Poltava reveals itself not only as a place, but as a state of mind—an intimate, feminine space where memory, loss, and resilience quietly endure.