Yana Bulgakova - "Volchok"

Since I was a child, I felt the connection between images from fairy tales and the mystical feeling of the presence of death. Fairy tales and death exist in the same field - in space without time and place. This project is an attempt to visualize this feeling and talk about death through Russian folklore images.

Each person in the photograph tells his own story about death – about acceptance, denial, co-presence, their fears and phobias.

Together we tried to turn these stories into folklore images, metaphors, recognised only by the author and the hero of the picture at the same time.

I was trying to show the stories about death as they were seen by a child, through the experience of “magical thinking”. The name "Volchok" (“Wolfie”) reflects the general idea of the project – in Russian culture it means both a child's toy and a folklore character who can drag you to your doom at any moment.