How Sasha Litvinov buried the gun

My grandfather's name is Sasha Litvinov. He died when I was 5 years old. My parents threw away almost all the things that were left of my grandfather. My first attempt to stay with someone who has been gone for a long time — a box with his things. Since then, I have been interested in the phenomenon of memory, the relationship with the past, its influence on the present.

Memory tends to collect, save letters, keep diaries, and pass stories from hand to hand. A person needs to leave fragments of his life to the future generation in advance and be sure that, that someone would remember him.

Post-memory is the transfer of memory to the next generation. It is inseparable from attachment to the family, roots, traditions, as it is inseparable from grief and memory of wars and conflicts. We think the past can influence our lives. Close relations with the past create new memories, reconstruct them. A person has a craving to relive something that cannot be returned. Time loses its linearity. The «celebration» of tragedies forms our loyalty to the past. Sometimes it traumatizes, clogs the consciousness between reality and fiction.

Kristina Sergeeva (1996) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. She graduated from the Academy of Art and Documentary Photography «Fotografika» in 2019. Her artistic practice unfolds around black and white photography, photobooks and collages. Her research addresses topics such as post-Soviet space, personal and collective memory, and the visual perception of the environment and its impact on the individual. The goal of her projects is to expand the usual understanding of photography, to reveal her artistic statement through the visual interpretation of reality by focusing on the images, consistency and depth of photographs. Kristina is the founder and organizer of NIZINA FEST, works and teaches at the Fotografika Academy.