Two years ago, in 2011, I decided to do a series of photographs called 'Herbarium'. The idea was to place a human being in the 'shoes' of a plant. I did not want to simply replace the plant with a human, but to unite the two, superimpose one on the other and vise versa. The meaning of this act, similarly to my earlier projects, is the awakening of ecological consciousness of the man, and reconstruction of his long-lost synthesis with nature.
 
In the abnormally hot summer of 2010, when Moscow was full of forest fire smoke, i felt sorry for the people suffocating in their poor apartments without air-conditioners, but i felt equally sorry for the trees that were dying by hundreds of thousands all around the city. I knew I was unable to water all the trees in Moscow and save them, but I kept watering the dozen trees in front of the apartment building where I lived.

 

That's when it occurred to me that all the disasters are only happening because the man has not asked forgiveness of nature in a very long time. In order to repair the world, humans need to go back being pagans: pray to and be respectful of the forces of nature.  People need to do this in order not to dry up, perish and only remain as a kind of herbarium.

 

Friends and acquaintances posed for me: I asked them to come to the Botanical garden and stand in front of a tree or a bush pressing a leaf of calking paper - traditional herbarium-making material - to themselves. What came through the semi-transparent paper was a kind of symbiotic projection of the man and the plant: something was visible, the rest remained impenetrable. Depending on how the person moved/turned around and breathed, the projection changed. Metaphorically, this was a similar effect to the veil of Veronica, stylistically it was reminiscent of the paintings by the Pre-Rafaelites and Gustav Klimt: tender pastel tones, herbal background, misty and moist atmosphere, with the faces melting into a soft diffused light.