On travels lasting a single roll of film:

I have a tradition: every time I travel, the first thing I do is go to a Kodak studio or a camera shop and buy a disposable camera to capture the adventure on film and then develop it.

It's an adventure in itself: getting to the store, finding the camera. And then, when you know you only have 30 frames at your disposal, you treat each one with trepidation. What if none of them turn out, or what if they're all too dark or overexposed? But the magic is that the shots from these single-roll-of-film journeys are always truly precious.

On memories you can touch:

When it comes to family archives, I'm a person of tickets, postcards, inserts. I always keep little things like that for memory.

Once, for my birthday, I received a scratchbook made by my friends. The idea was for me to collect moments from my life with my future husband in it.
Honestly, I only managed to thoughtfully decorate two joint trips. After that, I fell into a mode of periodically returning to the thought that I should get back to it somehow. But for some reason, it hasn't happened yet. Although I really miss the process of arranging printed photos, tickets, and other memorable trinkets.

In general, for me, a family archive is strongly associated with film photography — with photographs you can hold in your hands. Digital photos, by the way, aren't the same, even if you print them. You can feel the difference.

My memories of frames you can touch are quite vivid: at my grandmother's house, there are several kilograms of photo albums with memorable moments. I always loved flipping through them. They are so big, wide, with old black-and-white photos from my mother's youth, even from my grandmother's youth.

On wedding photos taken with disposable cameras and frames that capture life:

Last August, Anton and I had our wedding. We split the celebration into two days: first, the official part with the registration at the ZAGS, and a couple of days later, the fun part, with dinner and dancing. I always dreamed that this event would be documented on film.

The first part was shot by my friend and film photography enthusiast, Lera Vaganova, and the second part by the guests themselves, to whom we distributed disposable cameras.
Interestingly, this thought came to me long before I saw Monica from

Among the guests was a little boy named Aspar. He was so taken with the cameras that he walked around non-stop, snapping pictures. After the celebration, his father told us that we had infected him with a new hobby. And, it must be said, he took the most wonderful, lively, and spontaneous shots. In general, all the guests showed great creativity—the resulting photographs were certainly not what a typical photojournalist would have captured. I recently developed them; some came out dark, of course, and some were blurry, but in all these frames, there is life. It was wonderful.

I believe we will often turn to film photography again for our important family celebrations.

On creativity and the fatigue of online life:

In honor of my friend's bachelorette party, I received a gift certificate for an e-book. I've been trying for a long time to get around to compiling it, but honestly, it hasn't happened yet — for some reason, this process still feels like hard work to me.

With the album, it's not like that… I'm really looking forward to the moment when I print the photos and sit down to arrange them. This process is associated with something exciting and creative for me. I'm sure I'll have a great time, clear my head. And in the end, we'll endlessly revisit this album.

My friends and I love to sing because when you sing, your brain rests, and you simply enjoy the process. It's like flying, however cliché or overly poetic that may sound. One time, after another singing session, my friends and I were walking, and I asked if there was anything else in their lives that allowed them to completely switch off. One of my friends said she feels something similar when she makes collages.
I think I'll be able to try out this visual practice while working on the photo album.

We are all tired of computers, of the endless electronic cloud, and every opportunity to escape this cyclone has a restorative effect on the body and our state. It slows down, calms, and provides that much-needed rest.

On whether it's worth preserving important life moments in photos:

I often ponder whether it's truly important to capture beautiful moments in photos and videos, and how to find that balance between living life without being overly distracted by cameras, yet still preserving a piece of those events.

I had two telling cases. The first was the long-awaited concert of my favorite Beyoncé, which happened last spring in Stockholm. I immediately promised myself that I wouldn't film, to fully immerse myself in the process, remember the sensations, and then savor them. Now I remember that it was very good, I remember the emotions from what I saw, but I hardly remember what it looked like; my memory didn't retain the images.

Almost the same thing happened with the wedding. And when I recently re-examined the photos from those days, it was as if I remembered everything that happened all over again: the moments, the emotions. The memory became even more vivid. I wish for memories to be precisely that — vivid — as that's the only way to return to them again and again.