Iuliia Gataulina. From the photographic project ‘Through regimes
of separation’
Through regimes
of separation
Photo project, 2026
Location: Ulyanovsk, Russia
The photo series was taken in January 2026 and portrays my hometown, Ulyanovsk (Volga region, Russia), during a one-month stay with my family. Now residing in Tampere, Finland, I am separated from these places not only spatially—by thousands of kilometers—but also epistemically and politically, through closed state borders and geopoliticized security regimes. In the series, I focused on places filled with affective memories, attempting to bridge the spatial, geopolitical, and epistemic distances that now separate me from what I define as my home.
After the shooting and prior to development, the film passed through several X-ray scans at airport security and border checkpoints on my route from Ulyanovsk to Tampere via St. Petersburg and Narva, which affected the film’s quality.