These photos are from St. Petersburg, Russia where I’ve been living for the past year and a half. Half of them are children from a home in Pavlosk, on the outskirts of Petersburg. They are physically/mentally disabled children that have been for whatever reason abandoned by their biological parents and put into this home. Some of the parents visit, I think some of them do not.
The other pictures are adults in a similar situation who live in a home in Peterhoff, also a trip from the city of Petersburg. Many of them grew up in children’s home, so they lived their whole life in an institution. It is there home. The children, as far as I could notice, could not speak. Some of the adults are capable of speaking, some are not.
These photos represent two visits, one to each home. I’m calling this set “A Secret Inner World” because a friend of mine commented on the photos saying “the facial expressions are tip-of-the-iceberg glances into a world we can’t even imagine”. I think she’s probably right. These folks live in their own world and we don’t really have access to it. The photos provide little windows I suppose, but we’re still very much locked out.
