Where do the new timelines begin? Is there an origin, or are we recycling the past over and over, adding layers purely because they inform us about another aspect of something we already know? I think they begin in a moment of now, the point at which we decide to play with reality to see what else it can become. In other words, make art.

Art is a process of perceptual thinking that overlays narratives and often produces a new symbol to use to resolve accumulated collective problems. The answer will never be complete, however, just like the symbol is never universal.

After artistic perceptual thinking has exhausted itself, experiential knowledge stays in the creator’s body, and multitudes of such experiences create a unique language. It is not a style; it is the tool for the practical implementation of the resolution found through the process of active imagination.

The idea of active imagination was developed by Carl Jung and involves engaging with the contents of the unconscious mind through creative expression, such as writing, drawing, or visualisation. The goal of active imagination is to bring unconscious thoughts and feelings to the surface, allowing for personal insight and self-discovery. This process encourages individuals to interact with their inner world, often leading to a deeper understanding of themselves and their emotions.

Analytical thinking is usually applied to generate a question about current problems within the collective. The answer already exists, and yet, if it is communicated via the wrong symbol, it will answer nothing. The problem will persist.

Perceptual thinking is more than an inquiry into one individual’s psychological state – it includes unconscious (location- and group-specific) information entering the conversation and being visualised or materialised through the intuitive process that follows its own logic.

When an artist is engaged in perceptual thinking, their mind is preoccupied with artistic problems, resolving the conflict mirrored from the environment into the individual psyche and back again.

For me, intuitive street photography is like a state of perceptual thinking that I choose to enter, where I am very present with what is going on, while being absent to myself (from the analytical perspective). I am present as a being connected to the unconscious, as a moving body in space, which speaks the language of its own symbol, the moment it interacts with the environment via the photographic process.

Lately, I have been looking at some images I shot over the past 4 years, realising that sometimes you freeze an imprint of your emotion in that photograph and leave it for later, because you may not have the capacity to work on what you have just uncovered. Coming back to it later, sometimes years later, when you have already completed a certain part of the emotional puzzle you were working on, it may just fit perfectly.

In 2023, I was shooting primarily on expired film, as if trying to remember something I have (luckily) never encountered, working on a puzzle, the reality of the horrors of the war in my country of birth, Ukraine. Looking at it now, it was about acceptance of the fractured world as it unfolds, following the same old road it has already walked.

Through my practice, I reflected the monsters from my own psyche by taking them to places of historic conflict, not to bring negative emotion upon myself, but rather to allow the old, healed scars to inform the growth of the new tissue where it is needed.