This story first appeared on i-D Italy.
With her latest book The Bliss of Girlhood, Russian photographer Kristina Rozhkova has crafted what she calls an “ode to adolescence”, a delicate black-and-white tribute to the elusive phase of life that is teenagehood. Having grown up through the 00s in Perm, a city near Russia’s Ural Mountains, Kristina relocated to St Petersburg to attend art school. Despite never returning full time, she has always maintained a strong connection to her hometown, which is where she cast and shot this project – one very close to her heart.
In 2021, Kristina was included on the British Journal of Photography’s list of Ones To Watch; a resource that identifies the most promising young names in the industry. The journal’s editorial director, Izabela Rdwanszka Zhang, recognised in Kristina “an impeccable talent for storytelling and narrative… she uses her lens to explore themes of memory and nostalgia, leveraging her imagination, composition and colours to shape delicate stories”.
It’s something evidenced across this project, throughout which Kristina captures the coming-of-age process perfectly by dwelling thoughtfully on small details. The accentuation of certain elements – half-closed mouths, misplaced strands of hair, abandoned toys – create a palpable tension as innocence is outgrown and the viewer is confronted by the inevitability of ageing.
Hi Kristina. What it was like to be a teenager in 2000s Russia?
Before I had access to the internet, I felt like I was living in a bubble, a complete vacuum. It was like I was in a capsule that cut me off from the outside world. I was forced to change schools a lot as my family had to move often, so my childhood was not so peaceful. When I was 14, I was surrounded by subcultures like emos, goths and punks. I considered myself a goth – I dyed my hair pink, I listened to Tokio Hotel and my friends and I got piercings and hung out in cemeteries. It was all rather depressing and full of bad relationships with relatives and my peers. There was a lot of tension.
Adolescence is one of the main themes of your work in general. Where does your interest in this particular phase of life come from?
I think it stems from the nostalgia I started feeling almost as soon as I came out of adolescence. I’m 26 now, but I feel a strong nostalgia for being a teen – I like to remember the past. If I had to explain how being that age presents in The Bliss of Girlhood, it’s the fixation with cosmetics, stickers, diaries, with little secrets and naive games; with all of those moments and things we enjoy before entering adulthood. Everything was so easy but difficult at the same time.
How did The Bliss of Girlhood in particular come about?
It was born almost by chance. I was walking through the streets of my hometown and I saw those girls – they immediately struck me because they had very expressive faces. Before I met them, I wanted to do a project called “girl friends” about my own childhood friends, but once I saw them walking through the village, I realised that they were actually the friends I wanted to photograph. They invited me into their world of trinkets, beads, fake tattoos, rituals and rules.
How did the girls react when you asked them to be in your project?
They were very enthusiastic. We shot during the summer holidays – as access to phones and the internet was limited, they were happy to escape the boredom. They went swimming in the river, played games and visited each other’s homes. They were very curious about the project and came up with a lot of the ideas themselves, using props, bringing along cosmetics and toys and doing gymnastics. Sometimes their enthusiasm turned into whimsy. Fortunately, being on the same wavelength as them, they let me into their adolescent world so that I can show others all the beauty of that period too.
Your photos seem to be set in a dreamlike dimension. Was that intentional?
It’s really nice to know that my photos can make the viewer feel as if they are in the world of fantasy and dreams. That’s the idea I wanted to convey, and is something I felt myself while I was with the girls. It was like being in some kind of trance.
Did you see yourself in the subjects you photographed?
I thought a lot about myself while shooting the project. I imagined young me with her blonde bob, wearing the pink shorts and flip-flops my mother had bought me – even though I hated them at the time. I remember how much I loved little girls’ make-up, always pink and in the shape of butterflies, hearts and flowers. To this day I still love anything pink or glittery. The girls I photographed were at once carefree and contemplative, naive and serious – I think that’s one of the most distinctive traits of that fragile period of life.
Kristina Rozhkova’s ‘The Bliss of Girlhood’ is available here.
Credits
All photographs courtesy of Kristina Rozhkova