I went to the Ukraine for two weeks in August of 2005. After two days of travel we arrived at my grandfather’s brother’s house in Kobyla in western Ukraine. We stayed here for a little over a week before driving to the Crimea, the region near the Black Sea and the Sea of Azor in southern Ukraine. In both places we stayed with family members and not in hotels.
My project is important to me personally because my experience in the Ukraine was one in which I met family I had only heard of. Almost everyone in my photographs is a relative. I do not speak Ukrainian and could only understand them through my grandfather and my mother who could translate. Other than that, communication consisted of hand gestures and a few key words like “eat” and “sit.” For me, taking photographs of my relatives and their surroundings was a way to connect with and remember them. Not being much of a writer, I did not keep a journal, so my images will give me a way to look back at my experience. I often assimilate the photograph into a larger context of the experience; I may have a picture of a barn but because of the image I can recall that the house which is just outside the film frame was more western in the interior than some of the other houses in the community, and that inside we were given poppy seed ice cream bars coated with white chocolate and sesame seeds.