The Young Family

In a small town in Russia, a couple became the parents of a baby girl. The young family embarked on a journey, forced to address the couple's relationship, parenting, a new economic life, difficulty, and the struggle for survival. They decide to begin a new life. They sit in a library, explore an old globe to search for a better place to continue the dream from which they were created, seeking a place close to earth, mountains, water, and sky.

Or Sachs

ILFORD FP4+

The Dream

I join their dream in the new land they chose. I enter their lives by using a camera, completely by chance. Together we visit the mountains, bathe in rivers and springs, traveling long distances in the country under its sun and skies. In our long meetings, we allow words and stories to flow through us like the water in which we swim.

Or Sachs

ILFORD FP4+

Or Sachs

ILFORD FP4+

Forming Crossroads

The same dream dreamed by Pavel and Lusha was the chance for me to visit a life that I did not select: it formed a crossroads that allowed me to explore an alternate life. I return to them again and again to live within that same old world of relationships between youth and maturity, between men and women, between tiny villages, lakes, and wild stories from a different continent.

Or Sachs

ILFORD HP5+

I Am Seeking

Our encounter and the images I make creates a window for me overlooking a beautiful, clear lake in which I cast myself as a witness, observing how Pavel and Lusha created a reality out of their dreams for themselves. I am seeking a way to repair the world. I want to create a reparation of my life as well as through the camera lens. I am seeking an existential alternative, a substitute for the constant struggle for survival, and for the intense power struggles against invisible forces. I am seeking an option for a different life, a calm one. I am searching for it peacefully, through education and a search for proper values to illuminate my path.

Haleli

After an entire decade of working in education and a great deal of wandering, my first daughter, Haleli, was born. She connected me to the world that unfolded in tiny details of life in a home with a family. I wanted to teach her how to live the alternate life. To Teach her how to swim, dive, balance my body on a log and play in the tree branches. I dreamed of sitting with her with our feet in the water, learning how to listen attentively to the calls of the birds and to identify the fish.

Or Sachs

ILFORD DELTA 100

Alongside Them

At work and through my searches, I find myself drawn to stories and people who attempt to create additional possibilities within reality. I dream alongside them, sometimes together with them, sitting down and joining their journey. More than once, with deliberate intent, I blur the boundaries between life and the photograph of life, between what is being photographed, between what is photographed and the dream, and between the dream and reality.

Or Sachs

ILFORD FP4+

The Films I Love

This body of work was shot mainly on Pentax 6x7 and some Mamiya RB67. Most of the images were shot on ILFORD FP4+ pushed to 400. I Love this film. I develop my own films.  I love in FP4+, its an affordable film with good details, fine grain and great control of contrast.  I Love the thick base layer and also dries up very quickly and scans well. These all suited my work on this project and the amount of film I shot each meeting. On dark scenes i would go for HP5+ and push it to 1600 for dynamic scenes.