Прощай, Гражданка!

It was a completely unexpected find. As a child, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, and we would walk along Grazhdansky Prospekt in Leningrad and travel around the Caucasus for years. He was a creative person who would constantly make up stories for me, give me unexpected gifts, and come up with games and sports activities. My grandfather also had a camera, and he loved taking photos of me. I remember one particular photo shoot: I was performing at home, singing and dancing. Then I dressed up in my mother’s wedding hat and fulfilled my dream: I climbed under the ceiling in that hat and posed in front of my grandmother’s crystal chandelier. My grandfather told me it was too dark for photography, but I didn’t listen. This happened around 1993. It’s strange, but I never saw those photographs again. My grandfather, Pyotr Ivanovich Yevsky, passed away in 1998. For many years, my grandmother lived alone, but in 2021, we sold our apartment in Leningrad and moved her to Chernogolovka, where her mother lives. My grandmother is 98 years old. I moved a huge amount of things to my place, including my grandfather’s cameras, the Zorky and the Zenit. For another 3 years, they were lying on my shelf. In the fall of 2024, I decided to check if they were working or not, and I unexpectedly found film in the Zorky, realizing that it had been shot. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the same photo shoot on the scans after developing them!