After my father passed away he left a couple of shelves of checkered shirts and sharp-nosed shoes with chains, bottles of unfinished tinctures, ash of cigarettes on the balcony windows, a box of photos of his navigable youth and a lot of truth and false stories about his life.

As a child, I heard these stories several times, but it was never clear what was true or fiction. These stories merged with my memories of him and made up a certain image of my father.

Memories change under the influence of time and subjective vision of the past and present. When someone dies, the only place where he remains to live is our consciousness. However, this someone is not the same person, who was alive in reality. In my project “Chisayna”, I retell stories of my father’s life, make collages using my and his archival photographs, and documents, trying to realize how the reality about you changes after death and what is more important: someone whom you were or someone whom you become after death?

Untold stories

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) stigma is the main obstacle for fighting against spread of HIV. Stigma is the reason why people are afraid to be tested regularly, get more information and talk about HIV.

There are more than 1 million people in Russia who have HIV infection. According to Russian Public Opinion Research Center vast of Russians consider that the problem of spreading HIV and AIDS is very important. However, most of them don’t even know the difference between the two of them. People with HIV in Russia have difficulties of adopting children, insure their property or life, travel abroad. Because of their HIV status they can be fired, lose family relations, be rejected in hospitals. 

I have made portraits of people that live with HIV and asked them about stigma and discrimination they faced with. During these dialogues I tried to understand their personality, lifeview and express it in the portarits. 

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Marina Noskova

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