“Living Room Photo Albums”

A catalogue of memories

Welcome. IF YOU’D LIKE A FULL SIZE COPY OF A PHOTOGRAPH, I AM HAPPY TO SEND YOU ONE. PLEASE EMAIL ME AT BEllA.KOZYREVA@GMAIL.COM

AUGUST 2022

“Today, the sky is the sort of blue that painters have been trying to get down forever.

Don’t you think it’s really something? The impulse to replicate life as it is?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this impulse. Even when we’re not doing it for an audience. When we do it for ourselves.
Maybe it’s just our fascinatingly reflexive way of expressing praise or wonder.

‘I mirror what moves me.’

Or maybe it has to do with affirming that we exist. After all, to have made an accurate record of something is to prove that we have existed to see it.

The words we typically utilize to describe
our attempts to make images of the world-

‘Faithful’

‘Fidelity’

- are interesting too.

The closer to real life, the more ‘faithful’ the depiction. These words hint at a moral component to a greater degree of resolution. The perfect replica as a higher ideal.

Tragedy lives here; a replica is always a rendition. Because the machine of our vision and senses is ultimately an interpretive one. So, to attempt to replicate is to accept an inevitable failure of sorts.

Every attempt to make a faithful record may not result in one, but maybe every attempt to make a faithful record is an act of faith.

To attempt to replicate is to accept that your adoration lives in the face of your potential failure. You spit at futility- the most courageous, the most beautiful act.

That’s also, funny enough, what it means to love.

You put your balls on the table.”

I take pictures and I paint portraits. I make these efforts because of an instinct I only appreciated in adulthood. I finally put words to it in 2022. One day, the reasoning materialized in front of me suddenly, like a ghost.
The ghost brought me mercy. I’d spent many years in a tormented relationship with creativity. I felt I wasn’t like artist friends of mine- people who made things prolifically, with purpose and a personal vision. I produced things, but rarely with the intention to express a concept. Some of the earliest primal urges I remember were the urges to draw the people in my life. Then, to journal and to collect. Then, to photograph. These impulses to mirror and record came first and they came from simple reverence and devotion.

These photos aren’t artistic photographs. Many of them aren’t even good photos. Many of them I treasure and find beautiful. Yet, what makes them cohere is that they are all the result of my reverence for the life and people around me. My merciful ghost gave me the realization that perhaps I’d always unknowingly been expressing a personal vision: to love deeply is to record, and to record is to love deeply. My highest value is to do so knowing the record will never be exact, and that I can never hold a moment for eternity.

This page is the product of that and being able to share it makes me happy. We used to do this all the time when we kept photo albums at home. Thank you for looking. Thank you for letting me take your picture.

Yours,
Bella Kozyreva

I am on Instagram

To Mom and Matt.

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