Nadezhda Ishkinyaeva was born in Murmansk, Russia in 1988.After school graduation she moved in Saint-Petersburg and got a degree in Graphic Design in the Art School named after Nicholas Rerich. Also she studied photojournalism for two years.
Her most important project called “Terra Nullius” is about new part of Russia – Crimea. In this series, Nadezhda have tried to understand the opposition of concepts Our/Alien/Nobody’s, which is certainly on the agenda of the modern troubled world.
Project:
Terra Nullius is a Latin expression deriving from Roman law meaning “land belonging to no one”.
On the basis of international law January 14, 1895 the Japanese government formally included the Senkaku Islands into the territory of the country. Today China claims this area being “native Chinese”. The conflict escalated when Russia announced the “independence” of the Republic of Crimea.
I wanted to be privy to such historically important moment, as this, because Crimea is the place, where I have felt so good, where I have had love, freedom, dreams and hopes. I went there right after the annexation. It was important to me to bear witness and reconsider those events, which seemed to be complete absurdity to me. I couldn’t use habitual language of the documentary photography, so I turned to the magic japanese visual language. The more so, the news feed allowed to draw parallels between events in the Crimea and in the Senkaku islands.
Recently before that I’ve got acquainted with the book of japanese photographer Lieko Shiga. This was a sort of revelation for me. I wanted to use this language and tell my own history of the place. For me it’s a magic language for the magic place. It’s looks like a dream, where you tell, not knowing the words, but understanding the exact sense.
