I came to them early in the morning, left late at night. Among them was living a young and charming woman, she seemed absolutely her own among her own. I had a camera with me and I started taking photos. Neither the dwarfs nor the woman paid the slightest attention to me, and in this sense the photographs are not staged at all, on the contrary, they seem to me absolutely artless and rather documentary
Anatoly Belkin, artist
“In her own right, amongst her own people” is a personal project of one of the most famous artists of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Belkin. On two floors of the Anna Nova gallery will be presented black and white photographs, which tell the viewer about one day in the life of a strange swamp folk and a young woman who settled in an apartment in the center of St. Petersburg. Each photograph resembles a shot from a surrealistic noir movie, in which the role of the charming lodger departed for the young model, and in the role of the swamp folk appear bronze figures, reminiscent of dwarfs or midgets.
With the help of photographs, the artist tells the story of an unusual relationship between fantasy creatures and a human who could be real, immersing the viewer in the atmosphere of a mysterious Petersburg apartment. To enhance the effect of immersion in the story, the narrator also prepared an installation that recreates