The project consists of photographs made during the trips I took together with my father to the places where he was to live during and after imprisonment (Kazakhstan, Georgia, Russia), archive pictures and documents.
The Gulag was a system of forced-labor camps in the USSR that reached its peak during Stalin’s rule. My father, 85, was born in ALZhIR (the Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), northern Kazakhstan. My grandmother was arrested while pregnant in Moscow and sent to the camp for 8 years. All the children of the prisoners lived separately from their mothers, with barbed wire between them. My dad first saw his mother at the age of 8, when they were freed. They were deprived of civil rights until Stalin’s death.
‘Motherland hears, motherland knows’ is the title and the beginning of a song my father sang in front of Iosif Stalin as a member of the leading Soviet boys’ choir.

Dasha Karetnikova (*1996, Moscow, RU) currently lives and works in Belgrade. She completed her bachelor‘s degree in photojournalism at Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Erasmus programme at IHECS in Brussels (Brigitte Grignet’s photography class). She then graduated from Rodchenko Art School (Igor Moukhin, Margo Ovcharenko). Her works have been published in Novaya Gazeta, Strelka Mag and Greenpeace Russia, have been shown at personal and group exhibitions (Tokyo, Kiyosato, Brussels, Moscow, St.Petersburg), have won prizes (KOLGA, YP KMoPA, Young Photographers of Russia) and have been nominated for the ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’ (Newcomer) and ‘Visa pour l’Image’ (Canon student programme). She taught photography at the Moscow International Film School until 2022 when she left Russia.

dashakaretnikova.com