PHOTOGRAPHY NOMINEE

This photo series unfolds like a forgotten tale, weaving themes of mysticism, fleeting moments, and the rich textures of Slavic folklore. Each image invites the viewer into a liminal space, where reality softens and magic hums just beneath the surface. The golden hues and dreamlike softness evoke the feeling of stepping through a veil into a world both familiar and otherworldly, deeply rooted in the artist’s embrace of her Slavic heritage. The series opens with an abstract whisper of an autumn forest suspended in time, shimmering with secrets carried on the wind. Blurred shapes and golden light create a sense of movement and memory. This transitions seamlessly into the solemn guardianship of birch trees, sacred symbols in Slavic culture and folklore. The birch represents renewal, protection, and the feminine divine. Its radiant white bark reflects purity and light, while its presence in the forest is often considered otherworldly—vibrating at a high frequency that makes it a natural portal between realms. In Slavic tradition, the birch is a fairy tree, a liminal being that bridges the physical and the mystical, guiding those who seek its wisdom toward the unseen. At the heart of the series is a gilded figure, a reflection of the artist herself, bathed in warm, golden light. Her expression is one of quiet hope, as though daydreaming of something just beyond reach. Her eyes, soft and wondering, seem to look into a fairy court hidden behind the veil of the everyday world—a place of beauty, magic, and eternal possibility. Draped in rich fabric and adorned with pearls, she evokes the image of a lost Slavic princess, embodying both the fragility and strength of her cultural heritage. Her presence feels like that of the birch itself—ethereal yet rooted, a being caught between the tangible and the mythical, carrying the resonance of a portal to a world beyond. Together, these images form a narrative steeped in the magic of the natural world, the significance of cultural symbols, and the enduring pull of folklore. They beckon the viewer into a dreamscape where the boundaries between past and present, myth and reality, dissolve like sunlight through golden leaves. Through the birch’s sacred energy and the artist’s homage to her roots, this series becomes an invitation to step into the fairy-tale-like spaces that exist both within and beyond us, celebrating the eternal resonance of Slavic mysticism.