The magazine of the photo-essay
March/April 2023 back issue
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film maker
by Nadia Sablin
Alekhovshchina, Russia
Years Like Water is a decade-long look at a small Russian village, its inhabitants,
ramshackle institutions, nature, and mythology. The series loosely follows the lives of
four interconnected families, showing children grow up unsupervised in a magical
wilderness, and adults struggle for survival in the same. For over ten years of visits,
Sablin attended birthdays and funerals, drank tea with the grandmothers, and listened
to stories of the villagers’ loneliness and love for one another.
Her photographs from Alekhovshchina explore and describe a world that doesn’t fit
into the neat narrative of “Putin’s Russia” put forth by both Eastern and Western media.
It is more complicated – interweaving beauty, poverty, trauma, and hope.
Alyona Savelyeva, 2019
Katya Vysotskaya with Polina, 2017
Alyosha Savelyev, 2018
Katya Vysotskaya, 2016
Ferns, 2018
Nastya at Vysotskiye house, 2014
Vysotskiye family on New Years Eve, 2018
Teenagers on post office porch, 2009
New Year pig, 2018
Dance for Over 40s, House of Culture, 2017
Seryozha Maymistov, 2012
Petya and Andriusha Vysotskiye, 2014
Vitya, Alyona, 2010
Seryozha and Zhenya Maymistovy, 2014
